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THE 



OETICAL WORKS 



w. 



24i"^ 



WILLIAM COLLINS. 



WITH A MEMOIR. 




BOSTON: 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 

1865. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas .... v 
An Essay on the Genius and Poems of Collins, by Sir 

Egerton Brydges, Bart. xliii 

ORIENTAL ECLOGUES. 

Seinn ; or, The Shepherd's Moral .... 3 

Hassan ; **-, The Camel Driver ... . • • 7 

Abra ; or, The Georgian Sultana .... 11 

Agib and Secander ; or, The Fugitives .... 15 

ODES. 

To Pity . 21 

To Fear 24 

To Simplicity 28 

On the Poetical Character 31 

Written in the Beginning of the Year 1746 ... 34 

To Mercy 35 

To Liberty 37 

To a Lady, on the Death of Colonel Ross, written in 

May, 1745 44 

To Evening 48 

To Peace 52 

The Manners 64 

The Passions 58 

On the Death of Thomson 63 

On the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scot- 
land_ ; considered as the Subject of Poetry ; inscribed 

to Mr. John Home 66 



IV CONTENTS. 

Page 
An Epistle, addressed to Sir Thomas Hanmer, on his 

Edition of Shakespeare's Works .... 78 

Dirge in Cymbeline, sung by Guiderus and Arviragus 

over Fidele, supposed to be dead . . . . .87 
Verses written on a Paper which contained a Piece of 

Bride-cake, given to the Author by a Lady . . 89 

To Miss Aurelia C r, on her Weeping at her Sister's 

Wedding 91 

Sonnet 91 

Song. The Sentiments borrowed from Shakespeare • 92 
On our late Taste in Music 94 

Observations on the Oriental Eclogues, by Dr. Lang- 
horne 101 

Observations on the Odes, by the same • • • 118 



MEMOIR OF COLLINS. 



" A Bard, 
Who touched the tenderest notes of Pity's lyre." 

Hayley. 



No one can have reflected on the history of ge- 
nius without being impressed with a melancholy 
feeling at the obscurity in which the lives of the 
poets of our country are, with few exceptions, 
involved. That they lived, and wrote, and died, 
comprises nearly all that is known of many, and, 
of others, the few facts which are preserved are 
often records of privations, or sufferings, or errors. 
The cause of the lamentable deficiency of mate- 
rials for literary biography may, without difficulty, 
be explained. The lives of authors are seldom 
marked by events of an unusual character ; and 
they rarely leave behind them the most interest- 
ing work a writer could compose, and which 
would embrace nearly all the important facts in 
his career, a " History of his Books," containing 



VI MEMOIR OF COLLINS. 

the motives which produced them, the various 
incidents respecting their progress, and a faithful 
account of the bitter disappointment, whether the 
object was fame or profit, or both, which, in most 
instances, is the result of his labours. Various 
motives deter men from writing such a volume ; 
for, though quacks and charlatans readily become 
auto-biographers, and fill their prefaces with their 
personal concerns, real merit shrinks from such 
disgusting egotism, and, flying to the opposite 
extreme, leaves no authentic notice of their strug- 
gles, its hopes, or its disappointments. Nor is 
the history of writers to be expected from their 
contemporaries ; because few will venture to an- 
ticipate the judgment of posterity, and mankind 
are usually so isolated in self, and so jealous of 
others, that neither time nor inclination admits of 
their becoming the Boswells of all those whose 
productions excite admiration. 

If these remarks be true, surprise cannot be felt, 
though there is abundance of cause for regret, 
that little is known of a poet whose merits were 
not appreciated until after his decease : whose 
powers were destroyed by a distressing malady 
at a period of life when literary exertions begin 
to be rewarded and stimulated by popular ap- 
plause. 

For the facts contained in the following Me- 
moir of Collins, the author is indebted to the 
researches of others, as his own, which were - 



MEMOIR OF COLLINS. VU 

very extensive, were rewarded by trifling disco- 
veries. Dr. Johnson's Life is well known ; but 
the praise of collecting every particular which 
industry and zeal could glean belongs to the 
Rev. Alexander Dyce, the result of whose in- 
quiries may be found in his notes to Johnson's 
Memoir, prefixed to an edition of Collins's works 
which he lately edited. Those notices are now, 
for the first time, wove into a Memoir of Col- 
lins ; and in leaving it to another to erect a 
fabric out of the materials which he has collected 
instead of being himself the architect, Mr. Dyce 
has evinced a degree of modesty which those who 
know him must greatly lament. 

William Collins was born at Chichester, 
on the 25th of December, 1721, and was bap- 
tized in the parish church of St. Peter the Great, 
alias Subdeanery in that city, on the first of the 
following January. He was the son of William 
Collins, who was then the Mayor of Chichester, 
where he exercised the trade of a hatter, and 
lived in a respectable manner. His mother was 
Elizabeth, the sister of a Colonel Martyn, to whose 
bounty the poet was deeply indebted. 

Being destined for the church, young Collins 
was admitted a scholar of Winchester College on 
the 19th of January, 1733, where he was edu- 
cated by Dr. Burton ; and in 1740 he stood first 
on the list of scholars who were to be received at 



VU1 MEMOIR OF COLLINS. 

New College. No vacancy, however, occurred, 
and the circumstance is said by Johnson to have 
been the original misfortune of his life. He be- 
came a commoner of Queen's,* whence, on the 
29th of July, 1741, he was elected a demy of 
Magdalen College. During his stay at Queen's 
he was distinguished for genius and indolence, 
and the few exercises which he could be induced 
to write bear evident marks of both qualities. 
He continued at Oxford until he took his bache- 
lor's degree, and then suddenly left the Univer- 
sity, his motive, as he alleged, being that he 
missed a fellowship, for which he offered himself; 
but it has been assigned to his disgust at the 
dulness of a college life, and to his *being in- 
volved in debt. 

On arriving in London, which was either in 1743 
or 1744, he became, says Johnson, " a literary 
adventurer, with many projects in his head and 
very little money in his pocket." Collins was not 
without some reputation as an author when he 
proposed to adopt the most uncertain and de- 
plorable of all professions, that of literature, for 
a subsistence. Whilst at Winchester school he 
wrote his Eclogues, and had appeared before the 
public in some verses addressed to a lady weeping 
at her sister's marriage, which were printed in the 
Gentleman's Magazine, Oct. 1739, when Collins 
was in his eighteenth year. In January, 1742, 
he published his Eclogues, under the title of 
* 21st March, 1740. 



MEMOIR OF COLLINS. IX 

"Persian Eclogues;"* and, in December, 1743, 
his " Verses to Sir Thomas Hanmer on his Edi- 
tion of Shakespeare," appeared. To neither did 
he affix his name, but the latter was said to be 
by " a Gentleman of Oxford." 

From the time he settled in London, his mind 
was more occupied with literary projects than 
with steady application ; nor had poesy, for 
which Nature peculiarly designed him, sufficient 
attractions to chain his wavering disposition. It 
is not certain whether his irresolution arose from 
the annoyance of importunate debtors, or from 
an original infirmity of mind, or from these causes 
united. A popular writer! has defended Collins 
from the charge of irresolution, on the ground 
that it was but " the vacillations of a mind bro- 
ken and confounded ; " and he urges, that "he 
had exercised too constantly the highest faculties 
of fiction, and precipitated himself into the drea- 
riness of real life." But this explanation does 
not account for the want of steadiness which pre- 
vented Collins from accomplishing the objects he 
meditated. His mind was neither " broken nor 
confounded," nor had he experienced the bitter 
pangs of neglect, when with the buoyancy of hope, 
and a full confidence in his extraordinary powers, 
he threw himself on the town, at the age of twenty- 

* Afterwards republished with the title of " Oriental Ec- 
logues." 
t D'Israeli, in his " Calamities of Authors," vol. ii. p. 201: 



X MEMOIR OF COLLINS. 

three, intending to live by the exercise of his 
talents ; but his indecision was then as apparent 
as at any subsequent period, so that, in truth, 
the effect preceded the cause to which it has 
been assigned. 

Mankind are becoming too much accustomed 
to witness splendid talents and great firmness of 
mind united in the same person to partake the 
mistaken sympathy which so many writers evince 
for the follies or vices of genius; nor will it 
much longer tolerate the opinion, that the pos- 
session of the finest imagination, or the highest 
poetic capacity, must necessarily be accompanied f 
by eccentricity. It may, indeed, be difficult to 
convert a poetical temperament into a merchant, 
or to make the man who is destined to delight or 
astonish mankind by his conceptions, sit quietly 
over a ledger ; but the transition from poetry to 
the composition of such works as Collins planned 
is by no means unnatural, and the abandonment 
of his views respecting them must, in justice to 
his memory, be attributed to a different cause. 

The most probable reason is, that these works 
were mere speculations to raise money, and that 
the idea was not encouraged by the booksellers ; 
but if, as Johnson, who knew Collins well, asserts, 
his character wanted decision and perseverance, 
these defects may have been constitutional, and 
were, perhaps, the germs of the disease which too 
soon ripened into the most frightful of human 



MEMOIR OF COLLINS. XI 

calamities. Endued with a morbid sensibility, 
which was as ill calculated to court popularity as 
to bear neglect; and wanting that stoical indif- 
ference to the opinions of the many, which ought 
to render those who are conscious of the value of 
their productions satisfied with the approbation of 
the few ; Collins was too impatient of applause, 
and too anxious to attain perfection, to be a volu- 
minous writer. To plan much rather than to exe- 
cute any thing ; to commence to-day an ode, to- 
morrow a tragedy, and to turn on the following 
morning to a different subject, was the chief oc- 
cupation of his life for several years, during 
which time he destroyed the principal part of the 
little that he wrote. To a man nearly pennyless, 
such a life must be attended by privations and 
danger ; and he was in the hands of bailiffs, 
possibly not for the first time, very shortly before 
he became independent by the death of his ma- 
ternal uncle, Colonel Martyn. The result proved 
that his want of firmness and perseverance was 
natural, and did not arise from the uncertainty 
or narrowness of his fortune ; for being rescued 
from imprisonment, on the credit of a translation 
of Aristotle's Poetics, which he engaged to furnish 
a publisher, a work, it may be presumed, pecu- 
liarly suited to his genius, he no sooner found 
himself in the possession of money by the death 
of his relative, than he repaid the bookseller, and 
abandoned the translation for ever. 



Xll MEMOIR OF COLLINS.' 

From the commencement of his career, Collins 
was, however, an object for sympathy instead of 
censure ; and though few refuse their compas- 
sion to the confirmed lunatic, it is rare that the 
dreadful state of irresolution and misery, which 
sometimes exist for years before the fatal catas- 
trophe, receives either pity or indulgence. 

In 1747, Collins published his Odes, to the 
unrivaled splendour of a few of which he is 
alone indebted for his fame ; but neither fame 
nor profit was the immediate result ; and the 
author of the Ode on the Passions had little 
reason to expect, from its reception by the 
public, that it was destined to live as long as 
the passions themselves animate or distract the 
world. 

It is uncertain at what time he undertook to 
publish a volume of Odes in conjunction with 
Joseph Warton, but the intention is placed be- 
yond dispute by the following letter from War- 
ton to his brother. It is without a date, but it 
must have been written before the publication of 
Collins's Odes in 1747, and before the appear- 
ance of Dodsley's Museum, as it is evident the 
Ode to a Lady on the Death of Colonel Ross, 
which was inserted in that work, was not then in 
print. 

* June 7th, 1746. 



memoir of collins. x1u 

"Dear Tom, 
" You will wonder to see my name in an adver- 
tisement next week, so I thought I would apprise 
you of it. The case was this. Collins met me in 
Surrey, at Guildford races, when I wrote out for 
him my odes, and he likewise communicated 
some of his to me ; and being both in very high 
spirits, we took courage, resolved to join our 
forces, and to publish them immediately. I flat- 
ter myself that I shall lose no honor by this 
publication, because I believe these odes, as they 
now stand, are infinitely the best things I ever 
wrote. You will see a very pretty one of Col- 
lins's, on the Death of Colonel Koss before Tour- 
nay. It is addressed to a lady who was Ross's 
intimate acquaintance, and who, by the way, is 
Miss Bett Goddard. Collins is not to publish 
the odes unless he gets ten guineas for them. I 
returned from Milford last night, where I left 
Collins with my mother and sister, and he sets 
out to-day for London. I must now tell you, 
that I have sent him your imitation of Horace's 
Blandusian Fountain, to be printed amongst 
ours, and which you shall own or not, as you 
think proper. I would not have done this with- 
out your consent, but because I think it very 
poetically and correctly done, and will get you 
honour. You will let me know what the Oxford 
critics say. Adieu, dear Tom, 

"I am your most affectionate brother, 

" J. Warton." 



XIV MEMOIR OF COLLINS. 

Like so many of Collins's projects this was 
not executed ; but the reason of its failure is un- 
known. 

On the death of Thomson, in August, 1748, 
Collins wrote an ode to his memory, which is no 
less remarkable for its beauty as a composition, 
than for its pathetic tenderness as a memorial of 
a friend. 

The Poet's pecuniary difficulties were removed 
in 1749, by the death of his maternal uncle, 
Lieutenant- Colonel Edmund Martyn, who, after 
bequeathing legacies to some other relations, 
ordered the residue of his real and personal 
estate to be divided between his nephew William 
Collins, and his nieces Elizabeth and Anne Col- 
lins, and appointed the said Elizabeth his execu- 
trix, who proved her uncle's will on the 30th of 
May, 1749. Collins's share was, it is said, about 
two thousand pounds ; and, as has been already 
observed, the money came most opportunely: a 
greater calamity even than poverty, however, 
shortly afterwards counterbalanced his good for- 
tune ; but the assertion of the writer in the Gen- 
tleman's Magazine, that his mental aberration 
arose from his having squandered this legacy, 
appears to be unfounded. 

One, and but one, letter of Collins's has ever 
been printed; nor has a careful inquiry after 
others been successful. It is of peculiar interest, 
as it proves that he wrote an Ode on the Music 
of the Grecian Theatre, but which is unfortu- 



MEMOIR OF COLLINS. XV 

nately lost. The honour to which he alludes was 
the setting his Ode on the Passions to music. 

"to dr. william hayes, professor of 
music, oxford. 

« Sir, 
"Mr. Blackstone of Winchester some time 
since informed me of the honour you had done 
me at Oxford last summer; for which I return 
you my sincere thanks. I have another more 
perfect copy of the ode ; which, had I known 
your obliging design, I would have communicated 
to you. Inform me by a line, if you should 
think one of my better judgment acceptable. In 
such case I could send you one written on a 
nobler subject ; and which, though I have been 
persuaded to bring it forth in London, I think 
more calculated for an audience in the university. 
The subject is the Music of the Grecian Theatre; 
in which I have, I hope naturally, introduced the 
various characters with which the chorus was 
concerned, as (Edipus, Medea, Electra, Orestes, 
etc. etc. The composition too is probably more 
correct, as I have chosen the ancient tragedies 
for my models, and only copied the most affect- 
ing passages in them. 

" In the mean time, you would greatly oblige 
me by sending Jlie score of the last. If you can 
get it written, I will readily answer the expense. 



XVI MEMOIR OF COLLINS. 

If you send it with a copy or two of the ode (as 
printed at Oxford) to Mr. Clarke, at Winchester, 
he will forward it to me here. I am, Sir, 
" With great respect, 
" Your obliged humble servant, 

"William Collins. 

" Chichester, Sussex, November 8, 1750." 

" P. S. Mr. Clarke past some days here while 
Mr. Worgan was with me ; from whose friend- 
ship, I hope, he will receive some advantage." 

Soon after this period, the disease which had 
long threatened to destroy Collins's intellects 
assumed a more decided character ; but for some 
time the unhappy poet was the only person who 
was sensible of the approaching calamity. A 
visit to France was tried in vain ; and when John- 
son called upon him, on his return, an incident 
occurred which proves that Collins wisely sought 
for consolation against the coming wreck of his 
faculties, from a higher and more certain source 
than mere human aid. Johnson says, " he paid 
him a visit at Islington, where he was then 
waiting for his sister, whom he had directed 
to meet him : there was then nothing of disorder 
discernible in his mind by any but himself; but 
he had withdrawn from study, and travelled with 
no other book than an English Testament, such 



MEMOIR OF COLLINS. XVU 

as children carry to the school : when his friend 
took it into his hand, out of curiosity to see what 
companion a man of letters had chosen, < I have 
but one book/ said Collins, 'but that is the 
best.' " 

To this circumstance Hay ley beautifully alludes 
in his epitaph on him : * 

He, " in reviving reason's lucid hours, 
Sought on one book his troubled mind to rest, 
And rightly deem'd the Book of God the best." 

A journey to Bath proved as useless as the one 
to France ; and in 1754, he went to Oxford for 
change of air and amusement, where he stayed a 
month. It was on this occasion that a friend, 
whose account of him will be given at length, saw 
him in a distressing state of restraint under the 
walls of Merton College. From the paucity of 
information respecting Collins, the following let- 
ters are extremely valuable ; and though the 
statements are those of his friends, they may be 
received without suspicion of partiality, because 
they are free from the high colouring by which 
friendship sometimes perverts truth. 

The first of the letters in question was printed 
in the Gentleman's Magazine : 

"Jan. 20, 1781. 

"Mr. Urban, 
" William Collins, the poet, I was intimately 
acquainted with, from the time that he came to 
reside at Oxford. He was the son of a trades- 

2 



XV1U MEMOIR OF COLLINS. 

man in the city of Chichester, I think a hatter ; 
and being sent very young to Winchester school, 
was soon distinguished for his early proficiency, 
and his turn for elegant composition. About the 
year 1740, he came off from that seminary first 
upon roll,* and was entered a commoner of 
Queen's college. There, no vacancy offering for 
New College, he remained a year or two, and 
then was chosen demy of Magdalen college ; 
where, I think, he took a degree. As he brought 
with him, for so the whole turn of his conversa- 
tion discovered, too high an opinion of his school 
acquisitions, and a sovereign contempt for all 
academic studies and discipline, he never looked 
with any complacency on his situation in the 
university, but was always complaining of the 
dulness of a college life. In short, he threw up 
his demyship, and, going to London, commenced 
a man of the town, spending his time in all the 
dissipation of Ranelagh, Vauxhall, and the play- 
houses ; and was romantic enough to suppose 
that his superior abilities would draw the atten- 
tion of the great world, by means of whom he 
was to make his fortune. 

" In this pleasurable way of life he soon wasted 
his little property, and a considerable legacy left 
him by a maternal uncle, a colonel in the army, 

# Mr. Joseph Warton, now Dr. Warton, head master of 
Winton school, was at the same time second upon roll ; and 
Mr. Mulso, now [1781] prebendary of the church of Winton, 
third upon roll. 



MEMOIR OF COLLINS. XIX 

to whom the nephew made a visit in Flanders 
during the war. While on his tour he wrote 
several entertaining letters to his Oxford friends, 
some of which I saw. In London I met him 
often, and remember he lodged in a little house 
with a Miss Bundy, at the corner of King's- 
square-court, Soho, now a warehouse, for a long 
time together. When poverty overtook him, 
poor man, he had too much sensibility of temper 
to bear with misfortunes, and so fell into a 
most deplorable state of mind. How he got 
down to Oxford, I do not know ; but I myself saw 
him under Merton wall, in a very affecting situa- 
tion, struggling, and conveyed by force, in the 
arms of two or three men, towards the parish of 
St. Clement, in which was a house that took in 
such unhappy objects : and I always understood, 
that not long after he died in confinement; but 
when, or where, or where he was buried, I never 
knew. 

" Thus was lost to the world this unfortunate 
person, in the prime of life, without availing him- 
self of fine abilities, which, properly improved, 
must have raised him to the top of any profes- 
sion, and have rendered him a blessing to his 
friends, and an ornament to his country. 

"Without books, or steadiness and resolution 
to consult them if he had been possessed of any, 
he was always planning schemes for elaborate 
publications, which were carried no further than 



XX MEMOIR OF COLLINS. 

the drawing up proposals for subscriptions, some 
of which were published; and in particular, as 
far as I remember, one for 'a History of the 
Darker Ages.' 

"He was passionately fond of music; good- 
natured and affable ; warm in his friendships, and 
visionary in his pursuits ; and, as long as I knew 
him, very temperate in his eating and drinking. 
He was of moderate stature, of a light and clear 
complexion, with gray eyes, so very weak at times 
as hardly to bear a candle in the room ; and often 
raising within him apprehensions of blindness. 

"With an anecdote respecting him, while he 
was at Magdalen College, I shall close my letter. 
It happened one afternoon, at a tea visit, that 
several intelligent friends were assembled at his 
rooms to enjoy each other's conversation, when 
in comes a member of a certain college,* as re- 
markable at that time for his brutal disposition 
as for his good scholarship ; who, though he met 
with a circle of the most peaceable people in the 
world, was determined to quarrel ; and, though 
no man said a word, lifted up his foot and kicked 
the tea-table, and all its contents, to the other 
side of the room. Our poet, though of a warm 
temper, was so confounded at the unexpected 
downfall, and so astonished at the unmerited 
insult, that he took no notice of the aggressor, 

* Hampton, the translator of Polybius. 



MEMOIR OF COLLINS. XXI 

but getting up from his chair calmly, he began 
picking up the slices of bread and butter, and 
the fragments of his china, repeating very mildly, 

Invenias etiam disjecti membra poetse. 

" I am your very humble servant, 

"V." 

The next letter was found among the papers of 
Mr. William Hymers, of Queen's College, Oxford, 
who was preparing a new edition of the works of 
the poet for publication, when death prevented 
the completion of his design. 

" Hill Street, Richmond in Surrey, July, 1783. 

"Sir, 
" Your favour of the 30th June I did not receive 
till yesterday. The person who has the care of 
my house in Bond Street, expecting me there 
every day, did not send it to Richmond, or I 
would have answered sooner. As you express a 
wish to know every particular, however trifling, 
relating to Mr. William Collins, I will endeavour, 
so far as can be done by a letter, to satisfy you. 
There are many little anecdotes, which tell well 
enough in conversation, but would be tiresome for 
you to read, or me to write, so shall pass them 
over. I had formerly several scraps of his poetry, 
which were suddenly written on particular occa- 
sions. These I lent among our acquaintance, 



yyii MEMOIR OP COLLINS. 

who were never civil enough to return them ; and 
being then engaged in extensive business, I forgot 
to ask for them, and they are lost : all I have re- 
maining of his are about twenty lines, which 
would require a little history to be understood, 
being written on trifling subjects. I have a few 
of his letters, the subjects of which are chiefly 
on business, but I think there are in them some 
flights, which strongly mark his character; for 
which reason I preserved them. There are so 
few of his intimates now living, that I believe I 
am the only one who can give a true account of 
his family and connexions. The principal part of 
what I write is from my own knowledge, or what 
I have heard from his nearest relations. 

" His father was not the manufacturer of hats, 
but the vender. He lived in a genteel style at 
Chichester ; and, I think, filled the office of 
mayor more than once ; he was pompous in his 
manner; but, at his death, he left his affairs 
rather embarrassed. Colonel Martyn, his wife's 
brother, greatly assisted his family, and sup- 
ported Mr. William Collins at the university, 
where he stood for a fellowship, which, to his 
great mortification, he lost, and which was his 
reason for quitting that place, at least that was 
his pretext. But he had other reasons : he was 
in arrears to his bookseller, his tailor, and other 
tradesmen. But, I believe, a desire to partake 
of the dissipation and gaiety of London was his 



MEMOIR OF COLLINS. XX111 

principal motive. Colonel Martyn was at this 
time with his regiment ; and Mr. Payne, a near 
relation, who had the management of the colo- 
nel's affairs, had likewise a commission to supply 
the Collinses with small sums of money. The 
colonel was the more sparing in this order, having 
suffered considerably by Alderman Collins, who 
had formerly been his agent, and, forgetting that 
his wife's brother's cash was not his own, had ap- 
plied it to his own use. When Mr. William Collins 
came from the university, he called on his cousin 
Payne, gaily dressed, and with a feather in his hat ; 
at which his relation expressed surprise, and told 
him his appearance was by no means that of a 
young man who had not a single guinea he could 
call his own. This gave him great offence ; but 
remembering his sole dependence for subsistence 
was in the power of Mr. Payne, he concealed his 
resentment ; yet could not refrain from speaking 
freely behind his back, and saying 4 he thought 

him a d d dull fellow ; ' though, indeed, this 

was an epithet he was pleased to bestow on every 
one who did not think as he would have them. 
His frequent demands for a supply obliged Mr. 
Payne to tell him he must pursue some other 
line of life, for he was sure Colonel Martyn would 
be displeased with him for having done so much. 
This resource being stopped, forced him to set 
about some work, of which his ' History of the 
Revival of Learning ' was the first ; and for 



XXIV MEMOIR OF COLLINS. 

which he printed proposals (one of which I have), 
and took the first subscription money from many 
of his particular friends : the work was begun, 
but soon stood still. Both Dr. Johnson and 
Mr. Langhorne are mistaken when they say, the 
* Translation of Aristotle ' was never begun : I 
know the contrary, for some progress was made 
in both, but most in the latter. From the freedom 
subsisting between us, we took the liberty of 
saying anything to each other. I one day re- 
proached him with idleness ; when, to convince 
me my censure was unjust, he showed me many 
sheets of his ' Translation of Aristotle,' which he 
said he had so fully employed himself about, as 
to prevent him calhng on many of his friends so 
frequently as he used to do. Soon after this he 
engaged with Mr. Manby, a bookseller on Lud- 
gate Hill, to furnish him with some Lives for 
the Biographia Britannica, which Manby was 
then publishing. He showed me some of the 
lives in embryo ; but I do not recollect that any 
of them came to perfection. To raise a present 
subsistence he set about writing his odes ; and, 
having a general invitation to my house, he fre- 
quently passed whole days there, which he em- 
ployed in writing them, and as frequently burning 
what he had written, after reading them to me : 
many of them, which pleased me, I struggled to 
preserve, but without effect ; for, pretending he 
would alter them, he got them from me, and 



MEMOIR OF COLLINS. XXV 

thrust them into the fire. He was an acceptable 
companion every where ; and, among the gentle- 
men who loved him for a genius, I may reckon 
the Doctors Armstrong, Barrowby, and Hill, 
Messrs. Quin, Garrick, and Foote, who frequently 
took his opinion on their pieces before they were 
seen by the public. He was particularly noticed 
by the geniuses who frequented the Bedford and 
Slaughter's Coffee Houses. From Ins knowledge 
of Garrick he had the liberty of the scenes and 
green-room, where he made diverting observa- 
tions on the vanity and false consequence of that 
class of people ; and his manner of relating them 
to his particular friends was extremely entertain- 
ing. In this manner he lived, with and upon 
his friends, until the death of Colonel Martyn, 
who left what fortune he died possessed of unto 
him and his two sisters. I fear I cannot be cer- 
tain as to dates, but believe he left the univer- 
sity in the year 43. Some circumstances I 
recollect, make me almost certain he was in 
London that year ; but I will not be so certain 
of the time he died, which I did not hear of till 
long after it happened. When his health and 
faculties began to decline, he went to France, 
and after to Bath, in hope his health might be 
restored, but without success. I never saw him 
after his sister removed him from McDonald's 
madhouse at Chelsea to Chichester, where he 
soon sunk into a deplorable state of idiotism, 



XXVI MEMOIR OF COLLINS. 

which, when I was told, shocked me exceed- 
ingly ; and, even now, the remembrance of a 
man for whom I had a particular friendship, and 
in whose company 1 have passed so many plea- 
sant happy hours, gives me a severe shock. 
Since it is in consequence of your own request, 
Sir, that I write this long farrago, I expect you 
will overlook all inaccuracies. I am, Sir, 
" Your very humble servant, 

" John Ragsdale. 

u Mr. William Hymers, Queen's College, Oxford." 

The following communication, by Thomas War- 
ton, was also found among the papers of Mr. 
Hymers. A few passages, concerning various 
readings, are omitted. 

"I often saw Collins in London in 1750. 
This was before his illness. He then told me 
of his intended History of the Revival of 
Learning, and proposed a scheme of a review, 
to be called the Clarendon Review, and to be 
printed at the university press, under the conduct 
and authority of the university. About Easter, 
the next year, I was in London; when, being 
given over, and supposed to be dying, he desired 
to see me, that he might take his last leave of 
me ; but he grew better ; and in the summer he 
sent me a letter on some private business, which 
I have now by me, dated Chichester, June 9, 
1751, written in a fine hand, and without the 



MEMOIR OF COLLINS. XXVU 

least symptom of a disordered or debilitated un- 
derstanding. In 1754, he came to Oxford for 
change of air and amusement, where he stayed a 
month ; I saw him frequently, but he was so 
weak and low, that he could not bear conver- 
sation. Once he walked from his lodgings, op- 
posite Christ Church, to Trinity College, but 
supported by his servant. The same year, in 
September, I and my brother visited him at Chi- 
chester, where he lived, in the cathedral cloisters, 
with his sister. • The first day he was in high 
spirits at intervals, but exerted himself so much 
that he could not see us the second. Here he 
showed us an Ode to Mr. John Home, on his 
leaving England for Scotland, in the octave stanza, 
very long, and beginning, 

Home, thou return' st from Thames. 

I remember there was a beautiful description of 
the spectre of a man drowned in the night, or, in 
the language of the old Scotch superstitions, 
seized by the angry spirit of the waters, appear- 
ing to his wife with pale blue cheek, &c. Mr. 
Home has no copy of it. He also showed us 
another ode, of two or three four-lined stanzas, 
called the Bell of Arragon ; on a tradition that, 
anciently, just before the king of Spain died, the 
great bell of the cathedral of Sarragossa, in Arra- 
gon, tolled spontaneously. It began thus : 



XXV111 MEMOIR OF COLLINS. 

The bell of Arragon, they say, 
Spontaneous speaks the fatal day. 

Soon afterwards were these lines : 

Whatever dark aerial power, 
Commission' d, haunts the gloomy tower. 

The last stanza consisted of a moral transition to 
his own death and knell, which he called ' some 
simpler bell.' I have seen all his odes already 
published in his own handwriting ; they had the 
marks of repeated correction : he was perpetually 
changing his epithets. Dr. Warton, my bro- 
ther, has a few fragments of some other odes, but 
too loose and imperfect for publication, yet con- 
taining traces of high imagery. 

" In illustration of what Dr. Johnson has re- 
lated, that during his last malady he was a great 
reader of the Bible, I am favoured with the fol- 
lowing anecdote from the Reverend Mr. Shenton, 
Vicar of St. Andrews, at Chichester, by whom 
Collins was buried : l Walking in my vicaral gar- 
den one Sunday evening, during Collins's last 
illness, I heard a female (the servant, I suppose) 
reading the Bible in his chamber. Mr. Collins 
had been accustomed to rave much, and make 
great moanings ; but while she was reading, or 
rather attempting to read, he was not only silent 
but attentive likewise, correcting her mistakes, 
which indeed were very frequent, through the 



MEMOIR OF COLLINS. XXIX 

whole of the twenty-seventh chapter of Genesis/ 
I have just been informed, from undoubted au- 
thority, that Collins had finished a Preliminary 
Dissertation to be prefixed to his History of the 
Restoration of Learning, and that it was written 
with great judgment, precision, and knowledge of 
the subject. 

"T. W." 

The overthrow of Collins's mind was too com- 
plete for it to be restored by variety of scene or 
the attentions of friendship. Thomas Warton 
describes him as being in a weak and low condi- 
tion, and unable to bear conversation, when he 
saw him at Oxford. He was afterwards confined 
in a house for the insane at Chelsea ; but before 
September, 1754, he was removed to Chiches- 
ter, under the care of his sister, where he was 
visited by the two Wartons. At this time his 
spirits temporarily rallied ; and he adverted with 
delight to literature, showing his guest the Ode 
to Mr. Home on his leaving England for Scotland. 
During Collins's illness Johnson was a frequent 
inquirer after his health, and those inquiries were 
made with a degree of feeling which, as he him- 
self hints, may have partly arisen from the dread 
he entertained lest he might be the victim of a 
similar calamity. The following extracts are 
from letters addressed to Joseph Warton : 



TTY MEMOIR OF COLLINS. 

" March 8, 1754. 
" But how little can we venture to exult in any 
intellectual powers or literary attainments, when I 
we consider the condition of poor Collins. I 
knew him a few years ago, full of hopes and full 
of projects, versed in many languages, high in 
fancy, and strong in retention. This busy and 
forcible mind is now under the government of 
those who lately would not have been able to 
comprehend the least and most narrow of its de- 
signs. What do you hear of him? are there 
hopes of his recovery? or is he to pass the 
remainder of his life in misery and degradation ? 
perhaps with complete consciousness of his ca- 
lamity ." 

" December 24, 1754. 
" Poor dear Collins ! Let me know whether 
you think it would give him pleasure if I should 
write to him. I have often been near his state, 
and therefore have it in great commiseration." 

" April 15, 1756. 
" What becomes of poor dear Collins ? I wrote 
him a letter which he never answered. I suppose 
writing is very troublesome to him. That man is 
no common loss. The moralists all talk of the 
uncertainty of fortune, and the transitoriness of 
beauty; but it is yet more dreadful to consider 



!l 



MEMOIR OF COLLINS. XXXI 



that the powers of the mind are equally liable to 
change, that understanding may make its ap- 
pearance and depart, that it may blaze and 
expire." 

In this state of mental darkness did Collins 
pass the last six or seven years of his existence, 
in the house now occupied by Mr. Mason, a 
bookseller in Chichester. His malady is described 
by Johnson as being, not so much an alienation 
of mind as a general laxity and feebleness of his 
vital, rather than his intellectual, powers ; but his 
disorder seems, from other authorities, to have 
been of a more violent nature. As he was never 
married, he was indebted for protection and 
kindness to his youngest sister; and death, the 
only hope of the afflicted, came to his relief on 
the 12th of June, 1759, in the thirty-ninth year 
of his age, a period of life when the fervour of 
imagination is generally chastened without being 
subdued, and when all the mental powers are in 
their fullest vigour. He was buried in the church 
of St. Andrew, at Chichester, on the loth of 
June ; and the admiration of the public for his 
genius has been manifested by the erection of a 
monument by Flaxman, to his memory, in the 
Cathedral, which is thus described by Mr. Dal- 
laway, the historian of Sussex : 

u Collins is represented as sitting in a re- 
clining posture, during a lucid interval of the 



XXX11 MEMOITi OF COLLINS. 

afflicting malady to which he was subject, with a 
calm and benign aspect, as if seeking refuge 
from his misfortunes in the consolations of the 
gospel, which appears open on a table before 
him, whilst his lyre and one of his best com- 
positions lie neglected on the ground. Upon 
the pediment of the table are placed two female 
ideal figures in relief, representing love and pity, 
entwined each in the arms of the other ; the pro- 
per emblems of the genius of his poetry." It 
bears the following epitaph from the pen of 
Hayley : 

" Ye who the merits of the dead revere, 

Who hold misfortune's sacred genius dear, 

Regard this tomb, where Collins, hapless name, 

Solicits kindness with a double claim. 

Though nature gave him, and though science taught 

The fire of fancy, and the reach of thought, 

Severely dooni'd to penury's extreme, 

He pass'd in maddening pain life's feverish dream, 

While rays of genius only served to show 

The thickening horror, and exalt his woe. 

Ye walls that echo'd to his frantic moan, 

Guard the due records of this grateful stone ; 

Strangers to him, enamour' d of his lays, 

This fond memorial to his talents raise. 

For this the ashes of a bard require, 

Who touch' d the tenderest notes of pity's lyre ; 

Who join'd pure faith to strong poetic powers ; 

Who, in reviving reason's lucid hours, 

Sought on one book his troubled mind to rest, 

And rightly deem'd the book of God the best." 

Collins's character has been portrayed by all 



MEMOIR OF COLLINS. XXX111 

his biographers in very agreeable colours. He 
was amiable and virtuous, and was as much 
courted for his popular manners as for the charms 
of his conversation. The associate of Johnson, 
Armstrong, Hill, Garrick, Quin, Foote, the two 
Wartons, and Thomson, and the friend of several 
of these eminent men, he must have possessed 
many of the qualities by which they were dis- 
tinguished ; for though an adviser may be chosen 
from a very different class of persons, genius will 
only herd with genius. Johnson has honoured 
him by saying, that " his morals were pure and 
his opinions pious ; " and though he hints that 
his habits were sometimes at variance with these 
characteristics, he assigns the aberration to the 
temptations of want, and the society into which 
poverty sometimes drives the best disposed per- 
sons, adding, that he "preserved the sources 
of action unpolluted, that his principles were 
never shaken, that his distinctions of right and 
wrong were never confounded, and that his faults 
had nothing of malignity or design, but pro- 
ceeded from some unexpected pressure or casual 
temptation." A higher eulogium, from so rigid 
a moralist, could not be pronounced on a man 
whose life was, for many years, unsettled and 
perplexed ; and those only who have experienced 
the pressure of pecuniary necessities can be aware 
of the difficulty of resisting meanness, or avoiding 
vice, if not in the sense in which these terms are 
3 



XXXIV MEMOIR OF COLLINS. 

usually understood, at least in a sense to which 
they may as properly be applied — that of refusing 
to prostitute talents to purposes foreign to the 
conviction and taste of their possessor. 

On this mainly depend the annoyances and 
dangers of him who seeks a subsistence from his 
pen. The opinions which he may be desirous to 
express, or the subject he may be capable of 
illustrating, may not be popular, and the more 
important or learned they be, the more likely is 
such to be the case. Of course his labours would 
be rejected by publishers, who cannot buy what 
will not sell ; hence no alternative remains but for 
him to manufacture marketable commodities; and 
when the popular taste of the present, as well as 
of former times, is remembered, the degradation 
to which a man of high intellect must often sub- 
mit, when he neglects that for which nature and 
study peculiarly qualified him, for what is in 
general demand, may be easily conceived. It is 
not requisite to advert to the taste of the age 
in which we live, farther than to allude to the 
class of works which issues from the bazaars of 
fashionable publishers, and to ask, when such 
are alone in request, what would have been the 
fate, had they lived in our own times, of Johnson, 
Pope, Dryden, Addison, and the other ornaments 
of the golden age of literature ? But if even in 
that age the Odes of Collins were too abstracted 
from mundane feelings, too rich in imagery, and 



c 



MEMOIR OF COLLINS. XXXV 

too strongly marked by the fervour of inspiration 
to be generally appreciated, his chance of being 
so, by the public generally, is at this moment 
less ; and the only hope of his obtaining that 
popularity to which he is unquestionably entitled, 
is by placing his works within the reach of all, 
and, more especially, by acquainting the multi- 
tude with the opinion entertained of him, by those 
whose judgments they have the sense to venerate, 
since they are sometimes willing to receive, on the 
credit of another, that which they have not them- 
selves the discrimination or feeling to perceive. 

An anecdote is related of Collins which, if true, 
proves that he felt the neglect with which his 
Odes were treated with the indignation natural 
to an enthusiastic temper. Having purchased 
the unsold copies of the first edition from the 
booksellers, he set fire to them with his own 
hand, as if to revenge himself on the apathy and 
ignorance of the public. 

It is unnecessary to append to the Memoir of 
Collins many observations on the character of his 
poetry, because its peculiar beauties, and the 
qualities by which it is distinguished, are de- 
scribed with considerable force and eloquence by 
Sir Egerton Brydges, in the Essay prefixed to 
this edition. Campbell's remarks on the same 
subject cannot be forgotten ; and other critics of 
the highest reputation have concurred in ascribing 
to Collins a conception and genius scarcely ex- 



XXXVI MEMOIR OF COLLINS. 

ceeded by any English poet. To say that Sir 
Egerton Brydges's Essay exaggerates the merit 
of some of his productions may produce the retort 
which has been made to Johnson's criticism, that 
he was too deficient in feeling to be capable of 
appreciating the excellence of the pieces which 
he censures. It is not, however, inconsistent 
with a high respect for Collins, to ascribe every 
possible praise to that unrivaled production, the 
Ode to the Passions, to feel deeply the beauty, 
the pathos, and the sublime conceptions of the 
Odes to Evening, to Pity, to Simplicity, and a 
few others, and yet to be sensible of the occa- 
sional obscurity and imperfections of his imagery 
in other pieces, to find it difiiult to discover the 
meaning of some passages, to think the opening 
of four of his odes which commence with the 
common-place invocation of "O thou," and the 
alliteration by which sc many lines are disfigured, 
blemishes too serious to be forgotten, unless the 
judgment be drowned in the full tide of generous 
and enthusiastic admiration of the great and ex- 
traordinary beauties by which these faults are 
more than redeemed. 

That these defects are to be ascribed to haste 
it would be uncandid to deny ; but haste is no 
apology for such faults in productions which 
scarcely fill a hundred pages, and which their 
author had ample opportunities to remove. 

It may also be thought heterodoxy by the 



MEMOIR OF COLLINS. XXXV11 

band, which, if small in numbers, is distinguished 
by taste, feeling, anchgenius, to concur in Collins's 
opinion, when he expressed himself dissatisfied 
with his Eclogues ; for, though they are not without 
merit, it is very doubtful if they would have lived, 
even till this time, but for the Odes with which 
they are published, notwithstanding the zeal of 
Dr. Langhorne, who is in raptures over passages 
the excellence of which is not very conspicuous. 
To give a preference to the Verses to Sir Thomas 
Hanmer, of which all that Langhorne could find 
to say is, "that the versification is easy and 
genteel, and the allusions always poetical," and 
especially to the Ode addressed to Mr. Home, 
on the superstition of the Highlands, over the 
Eclogues, may possibly be deemed to betray a 
corrupt taste, since it is an admission which is, it 
is believed, made for the first time. In that Ode, 
among a hundred other beautiful verses, the fol- 
lowing address to Tasso has seldom been sur- 
passed : 

" Prevailing Poet ! whose undoubting mind 

Believed the magic wonders which he sung ! 

Hence, at each sound, imagination glows ! 

Hence, at each picture, vivid life starts here ! 

Hence, his warm lay with softest sweetness flows ! 

Melting it flows, pure, murmuring, strong, and clear, 

And fills the impassion' d heart, and wins the harmonious ear 1 " 

The picture of the swain drowned in a fen, and 
the grief of his widow, possessing every charm 



XXXV111 MEMOIR OF COLLINS. 

which simplicity and tenderness can bestow, and 
give to that Ode claims to admiration which, if 
admitted, have been hitherto conceded in silence. 

From the coincidence between Collins's love of, 
and addresses to, Music, his residence at Oxford, 
and from internal evidence, Some Yerses on Our 
Late Taste in Music, which appeared in the Gen- 
tleman's Magazine for 1740, and there said to 
be " by a Gentleman of Oxford," are printed in 
this edition of Collins's works, not, however, as 
positively his, but as being so likely to be written 
by him, as to justify their being brought to the 
notice of his readers. 

A poet, and not to have felt the tender passion, 
would be a creature which the world has never 
yet seen. It is said that Collins was extremely 
fond of a young lady who was born the day 
before him, and who did not return his affection ; 
and that, punning upon his misfortune, he ob- 
served, " he came into the world a day after the 
fair." The lady is supposed to have been Miss 
Elizabeth Goddard, the intended bride of Colonel 
Ross, to whom he addressed his beautiful Ode on 
the death of that Officer at the battle of Fontenoy, 
at which time she was on a visit to the family of 
the Earl of Tankerville, who then resided at Up- 
Park, near Chichester, a place that overlooks the 
little village of Harting, mentioned in the Ode. 

Collins's person was of the middle size and 
well formed; of a light complexion, with gray, 



MEMOIR OF COLLINS. XXXIX 

weak eyes. His mind was deeply imbued with 
classical literature, and he understood the Italian, 
French, and Spanish languages. He was well 
read, and was particularly conversant with early 
English writers, and to an ardent love of litera- 
ture he united, as is manifest from many of his 
pieces, a passionate devotion to Music, that 



■ Sphere-descended maid, 



Friend of Pleasure, Wisdom's aid." 

His family, which were very respectable, were 
established at Chichester in the sixteenth century 
as tradesmen of the higher order, and his imme- 
diate ancestor was mayor of that city in 1619 :* 

* Dallaway's Sussex, vol. i. p. 185 — The arms of the family 
of Collins are there said to have been, "Azure a griffin 
segreant or ; " but in Sir William Burrell's MS. Collections 
for a History of Sussex, in the British Museum, the field is 
described as being vert. From those manuscripts which are 
marked " Additional MSS." Nos. 5697 to 5699, the follow- 
ing notices of the Poet's family have been extracted. 

REGISTER OF ST. ANDREW'S, CHICHESTER. 

BAPTISM. 

Elizabeth, daughter of Mr. George Collins, 8th October, 1763. 

BURIALS. 

Mrs. Elizabeth Collins [the poet's mother], 6th July, 1744. 
William Collins, Gent, [the Poet], 15th June, 1759. 

REGISTER OF ST. PETER THE GREAT, 
CHICHESTER. 

BAPTISMS. 

Charles, son of Roger Collins, 8th February, 1645. 
George, -son of Mr. George Collins, 28th December, 1647. 
Humphrey, son of Mr. Richard Collins, 20th Dec. 1648. 



XI MEMOIR OF COLLINS. 

his mother's relations appear to have been of a 
superior condition in life.* Collins lost his father 
in 1734, and on the 5th of July, 1744, his mother 

George, son of Mr. George Collins, 7th September, 1651. 
Christian, daughter of Mr. Richard Collins, 1st Sept. 1652. 
John, son of Mr. Richard Collins, senior, 13th Dec. 1652. 
Elizabeth, daughter of Mr. Richard Collins, sen. 16th May, 

1656. 
Joan, daughter of Mr. Richard Collins, jun. 12th Dec. 1656. 
Judith, daughter of Mr. Collins, Vicar Choral, 17th April, 

1667. 
Elizabeth, daughter of Mr. William Collins, 6th March, 1704. 

MARRIAGES. 

Mr. Charles Collins and Mrs. Elizabeth Cardiff, 14th April, 
1696. 

BURIALS. 

wife of Mr. William Collins, 10th December, 1650. 

Susan, wife of Mr. Richard Collins, 3rd December, 1657. 

Mr. George Collins, 10th January, 1669. 

Mrs. Collins of St. Olave's Parish, 19th July, 1696. 

There are monumental inscriptions in St. Andrew's Church, 
Chichester, to the Poet's father, mother, maternal uncle, 
Colonel Martyn, and sister, Mrs. Durnford. 

* So much of the will of Colonel Edmund Martyn as re- 
lates to the Poet and his sister has been already cited, but 
the testator's situation hi life arid the respectability of his 
family are best shown by other parts of that document. He 
describes himself as a lieutenant-colonel in his Majesty's 
service, lying sick in the city of Chichester. To his niece 
Elizabeth, the wife of Thomas Napper, of Itchenor in Sussex, 
he bequeathed 100?. His copyhold estates of the manors of 
Selsey, and Somerly, in that county, to his nephew, Abraham 
Martyn, the youngest son of his late only brother, Henry 
Martvn, and to his servant. John Hipp, -he gave his wearing 
apparel and ten pounds. 



MEMOIR OF COLLINS. xli 

died. He was an only son : of his two sisters, 
Elizabeth, the eldest, died unmarried, and Anne, 
the youngest, who took care of him when he was 
bereft of reason, married first Mr. Hugh Sem- 
pill, who died in 1762, and secondly the Rev. 
Dr. Thomas Durnford, and died at Chichester in 
November, 1789. Her character is thus described 
on the authority of Mr. Park : " The Reverend 
Mr. Durnford, who resided at Chichester, and 
was the son of Dr. Durnford, informed me, in 
August, 1795, that the sister of Collins loved 
money to excess, and evinced so outrageous an 
aversion to her brother, because he squandered 
or gave away to the boys in the cloisters what- 
ever money he had, that she destroyed, in a 
paroxysm of resentment, all his papers, and 
whatever remained of his enthusiasm for poetry, 
as far as she could. Mr. Hayley told me, when 
I visited him at Eartham, that he had obtained 
from her a small drawing by Collins, but it pos- 
sessed no other value than as a memorial that 
the bard had attempted to handle the pencil as 
well as the pen." * That Mrs. Durnford was in- 
different to her brother's fame, is stated by 
others, and Sir Egerton Brydges, in his Essay, 
has made some just observations on the circum- 
stance. 

This Memoir must not be closed without an 

* Dyce's edition of Collins, 1827, p. 39. 



xlii MEMOIR OF COLLINS. 

expression of acknowledgment to the Bishop of 
Hereford, to the President of Magdalen College, 
to H. Gabell, Esq., and to I. Sanden, Esq., of 
Chichester, for the desire which they were so 
good as to manifest that this account of Collins 
might be more satisfactory than it is ; and if his 
admirers consider that his present biographer has 
not done sufficient justice to his memory, an an- 
tidote to the injury will be found in the fervent 
and unqualified admiration which Sir Egerton 
Brydges has evinced for his genius. 



AH ESSAY ON THE GENIUS AND POEMS 
OF COLLINS. 

BY SIR EGERTON BRYDGE8, 
BART. 

Collins is the founder of a new school of poetry, 
of a high class. It is true that, unless Buckhurst 
and Spenser had gone before him, he could not 
have written as he has done ; yet he is an inventor 
very distinct from both. He calls his odes de- 
scriptive and allegorical; and this characterises 
them truly, but too generally. The personification 
of abstract qualities had never been so happily 
executed before ; the pure spirituality of the con- 
ception, the elegance and force of the language, 
the harmony and variety of the numbers, were 
all executed with a felicity which none before or 
since have reached. That these poems did not 
at once captivate the public attention cannot be 
accounted for by any cause hitherto assigned. 
We may not wonder that the multitude did not 
at once perceive their full beauties; but that, 
among readers of taste and learning, there should 
not have been found a sufficient number to set 
the example of admiration, is very extraordinary. 



xllV ESSAY ON THE GENIUS 

In addition to all their other high merits, the 
mere novelty of thought and manner were suf- 
ficient to excite immediate notice. Nor was 
there any thing in Collins's station or character 
to create prejudices against the probability that 
beautiful effusions of genius might be struck out 
by his hand. His education at the college of 
Winchester, his fame at Oxford, his associates in 
London, all were fair preludes to the production 
of beautiful poetry. Indeed, he had already 
produced beautiful poetry in his Oriental Ec- 
logues, four years before his Odes appeared. 
These were, it is admitted, of a different cast 
from his Odes, and of a gentleness and chastity 
of thought and diction, which he himself was 
conscious, some years afterwards, did not very 
well represent the gorgeousness of eastern com- 
position. 

It was a crisis when there was a fair opening 
for new candidates for the laurel. The unifor- 
mity of Pope's style began already to pall upon 
the public ear. Thomson was indolent, and 
Young eccentric ; Gray had not yet appeared on 
the stage ; and Akenside's metaphysical subject 
and diffuse style were not calculated to engross 
the general taste. Johnson had taken possession 
of the field of satire, but there are too many 
readers of enthusiastic mind to be satisfied with 
satire. The pedantry and uncouthness of Walter 
Harte had precluded him from ever being a fa- 



AND POEMS OF COLLINS. xlv 

vourite with the public; Shenstone had not yet 
risen into fame ; and Lyttelton was engrossed by 
politics. When, therefore, Collins's Odes ap- 
peared, all speculation would have anticipated 
that they must have been successful. But we 
must recollect that they did not excite the admi- 
ration of Johnson ; and that Gray did not read 
them with that unqualified approval which his 
native taste would have inspired. This singu- 
larity must be accounted for by other causes 
than their want of merit. 

The disappointment of Collins was so keen and 
deep, that he not only burned the unsold copies 
with his own hand, but soon fell into a melan- 
choly which ended in insanity. Many persons 
have affected to comment on this result with an 
unfeeling ignorance of human nature, and, more 
especially, of fervid genius. It is, undoubtedly, 
highly dangerous to give the entire reins to ima- 
gination; the discipline of a constant exercise 
of reason is not only salutary, but necessary. 
But one can easily conceive how the indulgence 
of that state of mind which produced Collins's 
Odes could end in an entire overthrow of the 
intellect, when embittered by a defect of the 
principal objects of his worldly ambition. He is 
said to have been puffed up by a vanity which 
prompted him to expect that all eyes would be 
upon him, and all voices lifted in his praise. 
Such was the conception of a vulgar observer of 



xlvi ESSAY ON THE GENIUS 

the human character. Why should it have been 
vanity that prompted this hope ? It was a con- 
sciousness of merit, of those brilliant powers which 
produced the Ode to the Passions ! was ever a 
voice content which sung to those who would not 
hear, which was condemned 

" To waste its sweetness on the desert air? " 

Spenser's power of personification is copious 
beyond example ; but it is seldom sufficiently 
select; rich as it is in imagination, it too com- 
monly wants taste and delicacy ; it has the fault 
of coarseness, which Burke's images in prose two 
centuries afterwards, sometimes fell into. But 
Collins's images are as pure, and of as exquisite 
delicacy, as they are spiritual. They are not 
human beings invested with some of the attributes 
of angels, but the whole figure is purely angelic, 
and of a higher order of creation ; in this they 
are distinct even from the admirable personifica- 
tions of Gray, because they are less earthly. The 
Ode to the Passions is, by universal consent, 
the noblest of Collins's productions, because it 
exhibits a much more extended invention, not of 
one passion only, but of all the passions com- 
bined, acting, according to the powers of each, 
to one end. The execution, also, is the happiest, 
each particular passion is drawn with inimitable 
force and compression. Let us take only, Fear 
and Despair, each dashed out in four lines, 



AND POEMS OF COLLINS. xlvii 

of which every word is like inspiration. Beau- 
tiful as Spenser is, and sometimes sublime, yet 
he redoubles his touches too much, and often 
introduces some coarse feature or expression, 
which destroys the spell. Spenser, indeed, has 
other merits of splendid and inexhaustible inven- 
tion, which render it impossible to put Collins on 
a par with him : but we must not estimate merit 
by mere quantity: if a poet produces but one 
short piece, which is perfect, he must be placed 
according to its quality. And surely there is not 
a single figure in Collins's Ode to the Passions 
which is not perfect, both in conception and 
language. He has had many imitators, but no 
one has ever approached him in his own depart- 
ment. 

The Ode to Evening is, perhaps, the next in 
• point of merit. It is quite of a different cast ; it 
is descriptive of natural scenery; and such a 
scene of enchanting repose was never exhibited 
by Claude, or any other among the happiest of 
painters. Though a mere verbal description can 
never rival a fine picture in a mere address to the 
material part of our nature, yet it far eclipses it 
with those who have the endowment of a brilliant 
fancy, because it gratifies their taste, selection, 
and sentiment. Delightful, therefore, as it is to 
look upon a Claude, it is more delightful to look 
upon this description. It is vain to attempt to 
analyse the charm of this Ode ; it is so subtle, 



Xlviii ESSAY ON THE GENIUS 

that it escapes analysis. Its harmony is so per- 
fect, that it requires no rhyme : the objects are 
so happily chosen, and the simple epithets convey 
ideas and feelings so congenial to each other, as to 
throw the reader into the very mood over which 
the personified being so beautifully designed pre- 
sides. No other poem on the same subject has 
the same magic. It assuredly suggested some 
images and a tone of expression to Gray in his 
Elegy. 

The Ode on the Poetical Character is here and 
there a little involved and obscure ; but its ge- 
neral conception is magnificent, and beaming 
that spirit of inventive enthusiasm, which alone 
can cherish the poet's powers, and bring forth 
the due fruits. Collins never touched the lyre 
but he was borne away by the inspiration under 
which he laboured. The Dirge in Cymbeline, 
the lines on Thomson, and the Ode on Colonel 
Ross breathe such a beautiful simplicity of pathos, 
and yet are so highly poetical and graceful in 
every thought and tone, that, exquisitely polished 
as they are, and without one superfluous or one 
prosaic word, they never once betray the artifices 
of composition. The extreme transparency of 
the words and thoughts would induce a vulgar 
reader to consider them trite, while they are the 
expression of a genius so refined as to be all es- 
sence of spirit. In Gray, excellent as he is, we 
continually encounter the marks of labour and 



AND POEMS OF COLLINS. xlix 

effort, and occasional crudeness, which shows 
that effort had not always succeeded, Such as 
" iron hand and torturing hour ; " but nothing of 
this kind occurs in the principal poems of Collins. 
There is a fire of mind which supersedes labour, 
and produces what labour cannot. It has been 
said that Collins is neither sublime nor pathetic ; 
but only ingenious and fanciful. The truth is, 
that he was cast in the very moujd of sublimity 
and pathos. He lived in an atmosphere above 
the earth, and breathed only in a visionary world. 
He was conversant with nothing else, and this 
must have been the secret by which he produced 
compositions so entirely spiritual. He who has 
daily intercourse with the world, and feels the 
vulgar human passions, cannot be in a humour 
to write poems which do not partake of earthly 
coarseness. 

It may be asked, cm bono ? what is the moral 
use of such poems as these ? Whatever refines the 
intellect improves the heart ; whatever augments 
and fortifies the spiritual part of our nature raises 
us in the rank of created beings. And what 
poems are more calculated to refine our intellect, 
and increase our spirituality, than the pdems of 
Collins ? To embody, in a brilliant manner, the 
most beautiful abstractions, to put them into 
action, and to add to them splendour, harmony, 
strength, and purity of language, is to complete 
a task as admirable for its use and its delight, as 
4 



1 ESSAY ON THE GENIUS 

it is difficult to be executed. No one can receive 
the intellectual gratification which such works 
are capable of producing without being the better 
for it. The understanding was never yet roused 
to the conception of such pure and abstract 
thinking without an elevation of the whole nature 
of the being so roused. The expression of subtle 
and evanescent ideas, carried to its perfection, is 
among the very noblest and most exalted studies 
with which the human mind can be conversant. 

It has been the fashion of our own age to beat 
out works into twentyfold and fiftyfold the size 
of those of Collins. I do not quarrel with that 
fashion ; each fashion has its use : and my own 
taste induces me to perceive the value and many 
attractions of long narrative poems, full of human 
passions and practical wisdom. The matter is 
more desirable than the workmanship ; and much 
of occasional carelessness in the language may 
be forgiven, for fertility of natural and just 
thought and interest of story. But this in no 
degree diminishes the value of those gems, which, 
though of the smallest size, comprehend perfec- 
tions of every kind. It is easier to work upon a 
large field than a small one, — one where is 

" Ample room and verge enough 
The characters of hell to trace." 

But these diffuse productions are not calculated 
to give the same sort of pleasure as the gems. 



AND POEMS OF COLLINS. li 

How difficult was the path chosen by Collins is 
sufficiently proved by the want of success of all 
who have entered the same walk: Gray's was 
not the same, as I shall endeavour presently to 
show. In the miscellany of Dodsley and other 
collectors will be found numerous attempts at 
Allegorical Odes : they are almost all nauseous 
failures — without originality or distinctness of 
conception ; bald in their language, lame in their 
numbers, and repulsive from their insipidity of 
ideas. 

Gray's personifications can scarcely be called 
allegorical, they have so much of humanity about 
them. He dealt in all the noble and melan- 
choly feelings of the human heart : he never for 
one moment forgot to be a moralist: he was 
constantly under the influence of powerful sym- 
pathy for the miseries of man's life ; and wrote 
from the overflow of his bosom rather than of his 
imagination. It is true that his imagination pre- 
sented the pictures to him ; but it was his heart 
which impelled him to speak. Take the Ode on 
the Prospect of Eton College; there is not one 
word which did not break from the bottom of 
his heart. The multitude cannot enter into the 
visionary world of Collins : all who have a spark 
of virtuous human feelings can sympathize with 
Gray. It is impossible to deny that of these two 
beautiful poets Gray is the most instructive as a 
moralist ; but Gray is not so original as Collins, 



Hi ESSAY ON THE GENIUS 

not so inventive, not so perfect in his language, 
and has not so much the fire and flow of inspi- 
ration. 

When Collins is spoken of as one of the minor 
poets, it is a sad misapplication of the term. 
Unless he be minor because the number and size , 
of his poems is small, no one is less a minor 
poet. In him every word is poetry, and poetry 
either sublime or pathetic. He does not rise to 
the sublimity of Milton or Dante, or reach the 
graceful tenderness of Petrarch ; but he has a 
visionary invention of his own, to which there is 
no rival. As long as the language lasts, every 
richly gifted and richly cultivated mind will read 
him with intense and wondering rapture ; and 
will not cease to entertain the . conviction, from 
his example, if from no other, that true poetry of 
the higher orders is real inspiration. 

It will occur to many readers, on perusing these 
passages of exalted praise, that Johnson has 
spoken of Collins in a very different manner. 
Almost fifty years have elapsed since Johnson's 
final criticism on him appeared in his Lives of 
the Poets. It disgusted me so much at the time, 
and the disgust continued so violent, that for a 
long period it blinded me to all his stupendous 
merits, because it evinced not only bad taste 
but unamiable feelings. I cannot yet either 
justify it, or account for it. He speaks of Col- 
lins having sought for splendour without attaining 



AND POEMS OF COLLINS. liii 

it — of clogging his lines with consonants, and of 
mistaking inversion of language for poetry. Not 
one of these faults belongs to Collins. In almost 
all his poems the words follow their natural order, 
and are mellifluous beyond those of almost any 
other verse writer. If the Passions are not de- 
scribed with splendour, there is no such thing as 
splendour. If the beauties which he sought and 
attained are unnatural and extravagant, then the 
tests of correctness and good taste which have 
been hitherto set up must be abandoned. 

This severe criticism is the more extraordinary 
because Johnson professed a warm personal 
friendship for Collins; he professes admiration 
of his talents, learning, and taste, as well as 
of his disposition and heart, and speaks of his 
afflicting ill health with a passionate tenderness 
which has seldom been equalled in beauty, pa- 
thos, and force of language. That he could love 
him personally with such fondness, but be blind 
to his splendid and unrivaled genius, is utterly 
beyond my power to account for. Who can say 
that Johnson wanted taste when we read his 
sublime and acute criticisms on Milton, Dry den, 
and Pope ? Was it that he roused all the facul- 
ties of his judgment when he spoke of these 
great men of past times ; yet, that when he 
descended to his contemporaries, he indulged his 
feelings rather than his intellect, and suffered 
himself to be overcome by the evil passions of 



liv ESSAY ON THE GENIUS 

envy and contempt ? His natural taste was, pro- 
bably, not the best ; when his criticisms were 
perfect he had tasked his intellect rather than his 
feelings. He was a man of general wisdom and 
undoubted genius, but not a very nice scholar, 
and he prided himself upon his every-day sense, 
his practical knowledge, rather than those vision- 
ary musings which he thought a dangerous in- 
dulgence of imagination. He could not put the 
compositions of Collins among the mere curio- 
sities of literature, but he permitted himself to 
depreciate habits of mental excursion which he 
had not himself cultivated. 

It was not till more than twenty years after 
Collins's death that his Ode on the Superstitions 
of the Highlands was recovered. . The two War- 
tons had seen it, and spoke highly of it to John- 
son and others. About 1781, or 1782, a copy 
was found among the papers of- Dr. Carlysle, 
with a chasm of two or three stanzas. The public 
deemed it equal to the expectations which had 
been raised of it; for my part I will confess 
that I was always deeply disappointed at it. 
There are in it occasional traces of Collins's ge- 
nius and several good lines — but none grand — 
none of that felicitous flow and inspired vigour 
which mark the Ode to the Passions and other 
of his lyrics — none of that happy personification 
of abstract conceptions which is the characteristic 
of his genius. The majority of the lines lag and 



AND POEMS OF COLLINS. lv 

move heavily, and do not seem to me to rise 
much above mediocrity in the expression. The 
subject was attractive, and might have afforded 
space for the wild excursions of Collins's creative 
powers. As to the edition of Bell, in which it is 
pretended that the lost stanzas have been reco- 
vered, I have no more doubt that they are spu- 
rious than that I did not write them myself: I 
will not dwell upon this subject, but only men- 
tion that it is quite impossible Collins could write 
" Fate gave the fatal blow," and " bowing to 
Freedom's yoke ; " and such a line as 

" In the first year of the first George's reign/' &c. 

There is not one line among these interpolated 
stanzas which it is possible that Collins could 
have written. 

Mr. Ragdale relates that Collins was in the 
habit of writing numerous fragments, and then 
throwing them into the flames. Jackson, of 
Exeter, says the same of John Bampfylde. A 
sensitive mind is scarce ever satisfied with the 
reception it meets, when, in first heat of compo- 
sition, it hopes to delight some listener, to which 
it first communicates its new effusions. It al- 
most always considers itself to be " damn'd by 
faint praise." I have known fervid authors who, 
if they read or communicated a piece before it 
was finished, never went on with it. They 
thought it became blown upon, and turned from 



Ivi ESSAY ON THE GENIUS 

it with coldness, disgust, and despair. Yet the 
hearer is commonly not in fault : who can satisfy 
the warm hopes of aspiring and restless genius ? 

The Wartons have expressed themselves with 
praise and affection of Collins, but not, I think, 
with the entire admiration which was due to him. 
Joseph TTarton was a good-natured and generous- 
minded man, but something of rivalry lurked in 
his bosom ; and the fraternal partiality of Thomas 
Warton had the same effect. The younger brother 
seems to have thought that Joseph's genius was 
equal to that of Collins. Gray had the critical 
acumen to discern the difference ; but still he in 
no degree does justice to Collins. He accuses 
him of want of taste and selection, which is a 
surprising charge ; and the more so, because Gray 
did not disdain to borrow from him. Gray's 
fault was an affected fastidiousness, as appears 
by the slighting manner in which he speaks of 
Thomson's Castle of Indolence on its first ap- 
pearance, as well as of Akenside's Pleasures of 
Imagination, and Shenstone's Elegies. That 
Gray had exquisite taste, and was a perfect 
scholar, no one can doubt. 

Collins lived thirteen years after the publication 
of his Odes. It does not appear that he pro- 
duced any thing after this publication. How 
soon his grand mental malady extinguished his 
literary powers, I do not exactly know, nor is 
it recorded, whether any part of it arose from 



AND POEMS OF COLLINS. lvii 

bodily disorders. Medical men have never agreed 
regarding this most deplorable of human afflic- 
tions. In Collins's case it probably arose from 
the mind. On such an intellectual temperament 
tbo extinction of the visions which Hope had 
painted to him seems to have been sufficient to 
produce that derangement, which first enfeebled, 
and then perverted and annihilated his faculties. 
The account given by Johnson is different from 
that supplied by Mr. Ragdale and another ano- 
nymous communication. 

He had, perhaps, lucid intervals in which he 
discovered nothing but weakness and exhaustion. 
But he. appears to have sometimes had fits of 
violence and despair. It seems that he was an 
enthusiastic admirer of Shakespeare, and a great 
reader of black letter books. It may be inferred 
that his studies were not entirely given up during 
his malady ; but it is a subject of great wonder 
and regret that the "Wartons, the intimate friends 
both of his better and darker days, have left no 
particular memorials of him. He had a sister, 
lately, if not still, living, from whom, though 
of a very uncongenial nature, something might 
surely have been gathered. But there is a fami- 
liarity which, by destroying admiration, destroys 
the perception of what will interest others. There 
are few of our poets of rare genius, of whose 
private life and character much is known. Little 
is known of Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton : 



lviii ESSAY ON THE GENIUS 

not much even of Thomson. More is known of 
Gray by the medium of his beautiful letters; 
but when Southey, Wordsworth, and Scott are 
gone, posterity will know every particular of 
them; and, even now, know much which fills 
them with delight and admiration. But let us 
know something in good time, also of the new 
candidates for poetical fame ! 

If the life of a poet is not in accordance with 
his song, it may be suspected that the song itself 
is not genuine. Who can be a poet, and yet be 
a worldling in his passions and habits ? An arti- 
ficial poet is a disgusting dealer in trifles : no- 
thing but the predominance of strong and unsti- 
mulated feeling will give that inspiration without 
which it is worse than an empty sound. When 
the passion is factitious, the excitement has al- 
ways an immoral tendency; but the delineation 
of real and amiable sentiments calls up a sym- 
pathy in other bosoms which thus confirms and 
fixes them where they would otherwise die away. 
The memory may preserve what is artificial, but, 
when it becomes stale, it turns to offensiveness, 
and thus breeds an alienation from literature 
itself. 

That Collins has continued to increase in fame 
as years have passed away, is the most decisive 
of all proofs that his poems have the pure and 
sterling merit which began to be ascribed to them 
soon after his death. M. Bonstetten tells me 



AND POEMS OF COLLINS. llX 

that Gray died without a suspicion of the high 
rank he was thereafter to hold in the annals of 
British genius ? What did poor Collins think 
when he submitted his sublime odes to the names ? 
He must have had fits of confidence, even then, 
in himself ; but intermixed with gloom and despair, 
and curses of the wretched doom of his birth ! 
Is it sufficient that a man should wrap himself 
up in himself, and be content if the poetry creates 
itself and expires in his own heart ? We strike 
the lyre to excite sympathy, and, if no one will 
hear, will any one not feel that he strikes in 
vain ; and that the talent given us is useless, 
and even painful ? But who can be assured that 
he has the talent if no one acknowledges it? 
To have it, and not to be assured that we have 
it, is a restless fire that burns to consume us. 

Let no one envy the endowments, if he looks 
at the fate, of poets. Let him contemplate Spen- 
ser, Denham, Rochester, Otway, Collins, Chat- 
terton, Burns, Kirke White, Bloomfield, Shelley, 
Keats, and Byron, besides those of foreign coun- 
tries ! Perhaps Collins was the most unhappy of 
all ; as he was assuredly one of the most inspired 
and most amiable. 

"In woful measures wan Despair — 
Low sullen sounds his grief beguiled, 

A solemn, strange, and mingled air ; 
'Twas sad by fits, by starts 'twas wild." 



IX ESSAY ON THE GENIUS 

Langhorne's edition of Collins first appeared 
in 1765, accompanied by observations which 
have been generally appended to subsequent edi- 
tions. These observations have commonly borne 
the character of feebleness and affectation ; they 
have a sort of pedantic prettiness, which is some- 
what repulsive, but they do not want ingenuity, 
or justness of criticism. Part of them, at least, 
had previously appeared in the Monthly Review, 
probably written by Langhorne. Langhorne was 
not deficient himself in poetical genius, but is 
principally remembered by a single beautiful 
stanza, " Cold on Canadian hills," &c. From 
the time of Langhorne's first edition, Collins be- 
came a popular poet ; a miniature edition ap- 
peared soon after that of Langhorne; and as 
long as I can remember books, which goes 
back at least to the year 1770, Collins's poems 
were almost universally on the lips of readers of 
English poetry. That Cowper, in 1784, should 
speak of him as " a poet of no great fame," 
proves nothing, since Cowper's long seclusion 
from the world had made him utterly ignorant 
of contemporary literature. The negative infer- 
ence, from the omission of Beattie, is not of 
much weight. I cannot recollect the date of 
the article in the Monthly Review ; but, as it 
appears that Collins survived till 1759, I sus- 
pect it was before Collins's death. It was in 
September, 1754, that the Wartons visited him 



AND POEMS OF COLLINS. lxi 

at Chichester: in that year he paid a visit to 
Oxford, when it appears that he was suffering 
under exhausture, not alienation, of mind. 

The critics, and, among the rest, Mrs. Bar- 
bauld and Campbell, have ascribed to him " fre- 
quent obscurity;" this is unjust, — his general 
characteristic is lucidness and transparency: he 
is never obscure, unless in the Ode to Liberty, 
and, perhaps, in a few passages of the Ode on 
the Manners. Campbell's criticism is, other- 
wise, worthy of this beautiful poet, whom he 
praises with congenial spirit. When Hazlitt 
speaks of the "tinsel and splendid patchwork" 
of Collins, " mixed with the solid, sterling ore of' 
his genius," he speaks of a base material not to 
be found there. In Collins there is no tinsel or 
patchwork, one of his excellencies is, that the 
whole of every piece is of one web ; there are no 
joinings or meaner threads. There is no height 
to which Collins might not have risen, had he 
lived long, had his mind continued sound, and 
had he persevered in exercising Ins genius. 
Campbell remarks that, at the same age, Milton 
had written nothing which could eclipse his pro- 
ductions. 

Of the two communications regarding Collins, 
to which I have already alluded, one anonymous, 
the other by a Mr. John Eagsdale, I must say 
something more. The first, signed V., appeared 
in the Gentleman's Magazine, with the date of 



lxii ESSAY ON THE GENIUS 

the 20th Jan. 1781. I well remember its publi- 
cation, and with what eagerness I read it. I 
suspect it was at the very crisis of the appearance 
ef the last portion of Johnson's Lives, but possi- 
bly a year earlier. I perused it with a mixture 
of delight, melancholy, and disgust ; the first 
passage which struck me was this : " As he 
brought with him [to Oxford], for so the whole 
tone of his conversation discovered, too high an 
opinion of his school acquisitions and a sovereign 
contempt for all academic studies and discipline, 
he never looked with any complacency on his 
situation in the University, but was always com- 
plaining of the dulness of a college life. In 
short, he threw up his demyship, and going to 
London, commenced a man of the town, spend- 
ing his time in all the dissipation of Ranelagh, 
Vauxhall, and the playhouses ; and was romantic 
enough to suppose that his superior abilities 
would draw the attention of the great world, by 
means of whom he was to make his fortune," 
&c, &c. — " Thus was lost to the world this un- 
fortunate person, in the prime of life, without 
availing himself of fine abilities, which, if pro- 
perly improved, must have raised him to the top 
of any profession, and have rendered him a bles- 
sing to his friends, and an ornament to his coun- 
try." 

The vulgarity and narrow-mindedness of this 
last paragraph filled me with indignation and 



AND POEMS OF COLLINS. lxiii 

contempt. In a selfish point of view Collins 
might, unquestionably, have done better by bind- 
ing himself to the trammels of a profession ; but 
would he have been more an honor to his friends 
and an ornament to his country ? Are the fruits 
of genius he has left behind no ornament or use 
to his country ? Professional men, for the most 
part, live for themselves, and not for the world. 
Who now remembers Lord Camden, Lord Thur- 
low, Lord Rosslyn, Lord Kenyon, Lord Ellen- 
borough, or a hundred episcopal or medical cha- 
racters, all rich and famous in their day ? 

The character of his person and habits we 
read with deep interest. " He was passionately 
fond of music, good-natured, and affable, warm 
in his friendships, and visionary in his pursuits ; 
and, as long as I knew him, very temperate in 
his" eating and drinking. He was of a moderate 
stature, of a light and clear complexion, with 
gray eyes, so very weak at times as hardly to 
bear a candle in the room, and often raising 
within him apprehensions of blindness." 

The letter from Mr. John Eagsdale is addressed 
to Mr. William Hymers, Queen's College, Ox- 
ford, dated " Hill Street, Richmond, in Surrey, 
July, 1783." He appears to have been a trades- 
man in Bond Street ; and he surveyed the cha- 
racter of Collins (with whom he was familiar) 
with a tradesman's eye. He reproached the poet 
with idleness, not because he was lingering and 



lxiv ESSAY ON THE GENIUS 

losing his time on the road to fame, but because 
he omitted to get money by his pen. " To raise 
a present subsistence," says Ragsdale, "he set 
about writing his Odes ; and having a general 
invitation to my house, he frequently passed 
whole days there, which he employed in writing 
them, and as frequently burning what he had 
written after he had read them to me : many of 
them, which pleased me, I struggled to preserve, 
but without effect ; for, pretending he would 
alter them, he got them from me, and thrust 
them into the fire." That he wrote the Odes to 
gain a present subsistence is but the tradesman's 
mistaken comment. 

Gray was about four years older than Collins, 
and he survived him twelve years ; he appears to 
have spent these years in gloominess and spleen ; 
but we know not what intense pleasures he re- 
ceived from his solitary studies, from the improve- 
ment of his mind, from that exquisite taste and 
increasing erudition of which every day added to 
the stores. The enthusiasm of Collins was more 
active and adventurous, and his erudition pro- 
bably more acute. Timidity and fastidiousness 
were great defects in Gray ; they kept down his 
invention, and made him resort to the wealth of 
others, when he could better have relied upon 
himself. But as to borrowing expressions and 
simple materials, no genius ever did otherwise ; 
it is the new and happy combination in which 



AND POEMS OF COLLINS. lxv 

lies the invention. It may be doubted which are 
now most popular, the Odes of Collins or of 
Gray. On the one hand, what is most abstract 
is least calculated for the general reader ; on the 
other hand, the variety of learned allusions in 
Gray renders the style and thoughts of his most 
celebrated Odes less simple, less direct, and less 
easily comprehended at once ; but then his deep 
morality, the touching strokes which go imme- 
diately to the heart, his sensibility to the common 
sorrows of human life, his powerful reflection of 
the sentiments which " come home to every one's 
business and bosom," form an attraction which 
perhaps turns the scale in his favour. Of both 
these sublime poets the correctness of compo- 
sition renders the writings a national good. 

The French Revolution, which affected and 
partly reversed the minds of all Europe, produced 
a new era in our literature. There was good as 
well as evil in the new force thus infused into the 
human intellect. Our poetry had generally be- 
come tame and trite ; a sort of languid mechanism 
had brought it into contempt; it was very little 
read, and still less esteemed. This might be not 
merely the effect, but also the cause of a defi- 
ciency of striking genius in the candidates for 
the laurel. Collins and Gray were dead ; Mason 
had hung up the lyre ; and Thomas Warton was 
then thought too laboured and quaint; Hayley 
had succeeded beyond expectation by a return to 
5 



lxvi ESSAY ON THE GENIUS 

moral and didactic poetry at a moment when the 
public was satiated by vile imitations of lyrical 
and descriptive composition ; but Cowper gave a 
new impulse to the curiosity of poetical readers, 
by a natural train of thought and the unlaboured 
effusions of genuine feeling. There is no doubt 
that a fearful regard to models stifles all force 
and preeminent merit. The burst of the French 
Revolution set the faculties of all young persons 
free. It was dangerous to secondary talents, and 
only led them into extravagances and absurdi- 
ties. To Wordsworth, Southey, Scott, it was the 
removal of a weight, which would have hid the 
fire of their genius. But the exuberance of their 
inexhaustible minds in no degree lessens the value 
of the more reserved models of excellence of a 
tamer age. The contrast of their varied attrac- 
tions supplies the reader with opposite kinds of 
merit, which delight and improve the more by 
this very opposition. 

Authors seldom estimate each other rightly in 
their lifetimes. The race of poets, of whom the 
last died with the century, had little friendship, 
or even acquaintance among themselves; or 
rather, they broke into little sets of two and 
three, which narrowed their opinions and their 
hearts; Gray and Mason, Johnson and the two 
Wartons, Cowper and Hayley, Darwin and Miss 
Seward ; but Shenstone, Beattie, Akenside, Burns, 
Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Smith, &c. stood alone. This 



AND POEMS OF COLLINS. lxvii 

is not desirable. Innumerable advantages spring 
from frank and generous communication. Col- 
lins and Gray had not the most remote personal 
knowledge of each other. Gray never mentions 
Dr. Sneyd Davies, a poet and an Etonian, nearly 
contemporary ; nor Nicholas Hardinge, a scholar 
and a poet also. Mundy, the author of Need- 
wood Forest, passed a long life in the country, 
totally removed from poets and literati, except 
the small coterie of Miss Seward, at Litchfield. 
The lives of poets would be the most amusing of 
all biography, if the materials were less scanty : 
it is strange that so few of them have left any 
ample records of themselves ; of many not even 
a letter or fragment of memorials is preserved. 
None of Cowley's letters, a mode of composition 
in which he is said to have eminently excelled, 
have come down to us. Of Prior, Tickell, Thom- 
son, Young, Dyer, Akenside, the Wartons, there 
are few of any importance known to be in exist- 
ence. Those of Hayley, which Dr. J. Johnson 
has brought forward, are not of the interest which 
might have been expected. Mrs. Carter's are 
excellent, and many of Beattie's amusing and 
amiable : it had been well for Miss Seward if 
most of hers had been consigned to the flames. 
Those of Charlotte Smith it has not been thought 
prudent to give to the public. The greater part 
of those of Lord Byron, which Moore has hitherto 



lxviii ESSAY ON THE GENIUS 

put forth, had better have been spared : they are 
written in false taste, and are under a factitious 
character : in general, the prose style of poets is 
admirable ; — it was not Lord Byron's excellence. 
We have no specimens of the prose of Collins : 
it is' grievous that he did not execute his project 
of The History of the Eevival ofrLiterature, or of 
the Lives for the Biographia Britannica, which 
he undertook. Poets of research are, of all 
authors, best qualified to write biography with 
sagacity and eloquence ; they see into the human 
heart, and detect its most secret movements ; and 
if there be a class of literature more amusing and 
more instructive than another, it is well written 
biography. 

We have a few poets who have not possessed 
erudition ; for genius will overcome all deficiencies 
of art and labour, such as Shakespeare, Chatter- 
ton, Burns, and Bloomfield : but it cannot be 
questioned that erudition is a mighty aid. Milton 
could never have been what he was without pro- 
found and laborious erudition. Another necessary 
knowledge is the knowledge of the human heart, 
which no industry and learning will give. It is 
an intuitive gift, which mainly depends on an 
acute and correct imagination, and a sympathetic 
sensibility of the human passions. Among the 
innumerable rich endowments of Shakespeare this 
was the first ; it was the predominant brilliance 



I 



AND POEMS OF COLLINS. lxix 

of his knowledge which gave him correctness of 
description, sentiment, and observation, and clear- 
ness, force, and eloquence of language. 

Collins had only reached the age of twenty-six 
when his Odes were published : what inconceiv- 
able power would the maturity of age have given 
him ? It is lamentable that he had no familiar 
friend and companion from that period capable 
of apprehending and remembering his conversa- 
tions. In his lucid intervals he must have said 
many wise, many learned, and many brilliant 
things ; perhaps his very disease, in its vacillation 
between light and darkness, may have struck out 
many unexpected and surprising beauties, which 
common attendants were utterly incapable of 
appreciating. The flushes of the mind under the 
unnatural impulses of malady are sometimes in- 
imitably splendid. His reason, at times, was 
sound, for his reason was fervid to the last. But 
it is said that his shrieks sometimes resounded 
through the cathedral cloisters of Chichester till 
the horror of those who heard him was insup- 
portable. 

All these speculations may appear tedious to 
those whose curiosity is confined to facts : but 
new facts regarding Collins are not to be had: 
and what are facts unless they are accompanied 
by reflections, conclusions, and sentiments ? The 
use of facts is to teach us to think, to judge, and 



1XX ESSAY ON THE GENIUS 

to feel : and facts, regarding men of genius, are 
valuable in enabling us to contemplate how far 
the gifts of high intellect contribute to our happi- 
ness, or afford guides for the rest of mankind ; 
in what respects they have the possessors upon 
an equality with the herd of the people; and 
where they expose them to temptations from 
which others are free. For these purposes the 
ill fated Collins is a melancholy illustration : the 
Muse had touched the lips of his infancy, and 
infused her spirit into him ; she had given him a 
piercing understanding, and an amiable disposi- 
tion and temper ; she enabled him to come forth 
with poetry of the first class, in the earliest bloom 
of youth ; and to deserve, if not to win, the en- 
vied laurel, which millions have reached at in 
vain ! What seeming glories and blessings were 
these ! Yet to how few was so much misery dis- 
pensed as to this once envied being! May we 
not hope that his spirit now has its mighty 
reward ? 

Let it not be denied that there is high virtue in 
the culture of the mind, when directed to pure 
and elevated objects, and accustoming itself to 
travel in lofty paths ! The mind cannot attain 
the necessary refinement, nor have its sight 
cleared of the film of earthly grossness, unless 
the heart throws off the dregs of coarser feeling, 
and keeps its wings afloat on a lighter and airier 






AND POEMS OF COLLINS. Ixxi 

atmosphere. It may be said, that there have 
been bad men who have been great poets : but 
this position remains to be proved. The disso- 
lute men who have written verses have not been 
great poets. Were Dante, Petrarch, Tasso, 
Spenser, Shakespeare, Dryden, Pope, Thomson, 
Burns, bad men ? We know that Milton's cha- 
racter was great and holy, whatever were his 
politics : and who could be more virtuous than 
Gray, Beattie, Cowper, and Kirke White ? And 
have we not virtuous poets among the living, — 
men whose native splendour and intellectual cul- 
ture have almost purified them into spirits ? Let 
us never cease to meditate on the dejected inspi- 
ration, which could pour forth such strains as 
these : 

" With eyes upraised, as one inspired, 

Pale Melancholy sat retired; 

And from her wild sequester' d seat, 

In notes by distance made more sweet, 
Pour'd through the mellow horn her pensive soul: 

And, dashing soft from rocks around, 
- Bubbling runnels join'd the sound; 
Through glades and glooms the mingled measures stole, 

Or o'er some haunted stream with fond delay 

Eound a holy calm diffusing, 

Love of peace and lonely musing, 

In hollow murmurs died away." 

There are those who will think the praises thus 
bestowed upon Collins extravagant. It is now 



lxxii 



ESSAY ON THE GENIUS, ETC. 



sixty years since I became familiar with him; 
and I still think of him with unabated admira- 
tion. When the calm judgment of age confirms 
the passion of youth and boyhood, we cannot be 
much mistaken in the merit we ascribe to him 
who is the object of it. 

S. E. B. 



ORIENTAL ECLOGUES. 

WRITTEN ORIGINALLY FOR THE ENTERTAIN- 
MENT OP THE LADIES OF TAURIS. 

AND NOW TRANSLATED. 

Ubi primus equis Oriens adflavit anhelis. 

Vikg. 



The First Edition was entitled, "Persian Eclogues, 
written originally for the Entertainment of the Ladies of 
Tauris. And now first translated, &c. 

Quod si non hie tantus fructus ostenderetur, et si ex 
his studiis delectatio sola peteretur ; tamen, ut opinor, 
hanc anirni remissionem humanissimam ac liberalissi- 
mam judicaretis. Cic. pro Arch, Poeta" 



PREFACE. 



It is with the writings of mankind, in some mea- 
sure, as with their complexions or their dress; 
each nation hath a peculiarity in all these, to dis- 
tinguish it from the rest of the world. 

The gravity of the Spaniard, and the levity of 
the Frenchman, are as evident in all their pro- 
ductions as in their persons themselves ; and the 
style of my countrymen is as naturally strong and 
nervous, as that of an Arabian or Persian is rich 
and figurative. 

There is an elegancy and wildness of thought 
which recommends all their compositions; and 
our geniuses are as much too cold for the enter- 
tainment of such sentiments, as our climate is 
for their fruits and spices. If any of these beau- 
ties are to be found in the following Eclogues, I 
hope my reader will consider them as an argu- 
ment of their being original. I received them at 
the hands of a merchant, who had made it his 
business- to enrich himself with the learning, as 
well as the silks and carpets of the Persians. 



A PREFACE. 

The little information I could gather concerning 
their author, was, that his name was Abdallah, 
and that he was a native of Tauris. 

It was in that city that he died of a distemper 
fatal in those parts, whilst he was engaged in 
celebrating the victories of his favourite monarch, 
the great Abbas.* As to the Eclogues them- 
selves, they give a very just view of the miseries 
and inconveniences, as well as the felicities, that 
attend one of the finest countries in the East. 

The time of writing them was probably in the 
beginning of Sha Sultan Hosseyn's reign, the 
successor of Sen or Solyman the Second. 

Whatever defects, as, I doubt not, there will 
be many, fall under the reader's observation, I 
hope his candour will incline him to make the 
following reflection : 

That the works of Orientals contain many pe- 
culiarities, and that, through defect of language, 
few European translators can do them justice. 



* In the Persian tongue, Abbas signifieth " the father of 
the people." 



ORIENTAL ECLOGUES. 
ECLOGUE L 

SELIM; OR, THE SHEPHERD'S MORAL. 

Scene, A valley near Bagdat. 
Time, The morning. 

1 Ye Persian maids, attend your poet's lays, 
And hear how shepherds pass their golden days. 
Not all are blest, whom fortune's hand sustains 
With wealth in courts, nor all that haunt the plains : 
Well may your hearts believe the truths I tell ; 5 
'Tis virtue makes the bliss, where'er we dwell.' 

Thus Selim sung, by sacred Truth inspired ; 
Nor praise, but such as Truth bestow'd, desired : 
Wise in himself, his meaning songs convey'd 
Informing morals to the shepherd maid ; 10 

Or taught the swains that surest bliss to find, 
What groves nor streams bestow, a virtuous mind. 

VARIATION. 

Ver. 8. No praise the youth, but hers alone desired : 



4 ECLOGUE I. 

When sweet and blushing, like a virgin bride, 
The radiant morn resumed her orient pride ; 
"When wanton gales along the valleys play, 15 
Breathe on each flower, and bear their sweets away ; 
By Tigris' wandering waves he sat, and sung 
This useful lesson for the fair and young. 

6 Ye Persian dames/ he said, ' to you belong — 
Well may they please — the morals of my song : 
No fairer maids, I trust, than you are found, 21 
Graced with soft arts, the peopled world around ! 
The morn that lights you, to your loves supplies 
Each gentler ray delicious to your eyes : 
For you those flowers her fragrant hands bestow; 25 
And yours the love that kings delight to know. 
Yet think not these, all beauteous as they are, 
The best kind blessings heaven can grant the fair ! 
Who trust alone in beauty's feeble ray 
Boast but the worth * Balsora's pearls display : 30 
Drawn from the deep we own their surface bright, 
But, dark within, they drink no lustrous light : 
Such are the maids, and such the charms they boast, 
By sense unaided, or to virtue lost. 

VARIATIONS. 

Ver. 13. When sweet and odorous, like an eastern bride, 

30. Balsora's pearls have more of worth than they : 

31. Drawn from the deep, they sparkle to the sight, 
And all-unconscious shoot a lustrous light : 

* The gulf of that name, famous for the pearl fishery. 



SELIM. 

Self-flattering sex ! your hearts believe in vain 35 
That love shall blind, when once he fires, the swain ; 
Or hope a lover by your faults to win, 
As spots on ermine beautify the skin : 
Who seeks secure to rule, be first her care 
Each softer virtue that adorns the fair ; 40 

Each tender passion man delights to find, 
The loved perfections of a female mind ! 

6 Blest were the days when Wisdom held her 
reign, 
And shepherds sought her on the silent plain ! 
With Truth she wedded in the secret grove, 45 
Immortal Truth, and daughters bless'd their love. 
O haste, fair maids ! ye Virtues, come away ! 
Sweet Peace and Plenty lead you on your way ! 
The balmy shrub, for you shall love our shore, 
By Ind excelTd, or Araby, no more. 50 , 

i Lost to our fields, for so the fates ordain, 
The dear deserters shall return again. 
Come thou, whose thoughts as limpid springs are 

clear, 
To lead the train, sweet Modesty, appear : 

VARIATIONS. 

Ver. 46. The fair-eyed Truth, and daughters bless'd their 
love. 
63. come, thou Modesty, as they decree, 

"The rose may then improve her blush by thee. 



b ECLOGUE I. 

Here make thy court amidst our rural scene, 55 
And shepherd girls shall own thee for their queen : 
With thee be Chastity, of all afraid, 
Distrusting all, a wise suspicious maid, 
But man the most : — not more the mountain doe 
Holds the swift falcon for her deadly foe. 60 

Cold is her breast, like flowers that drink the dew ; 
A silken veil conceals her from the view. 
No wild desires amidst thy train be known ; 
But Faith, whose heart is fix'd on one alone : 
Desponding Meekness, with her downcast eyes, 
And friendly Pity, full of tender sighs ; 66 

And Love the last : by these your hearts approve ; 
These are the virtues that must lead to love.' 

Thus sung the swain ; and ancient legends say 
The maids of Bagdat verified the lay : 70 

.Dear to the plains, the Virtues came along, 
The shepherds loved, and Selim bless'd his song. 

VARIATION. 

Ver. 69. Thus sting the swain, and eastern legends say 



ECLOGUE H. 

HASSAN; OE, THE CAMEL DRIVER. 

Scene, The desert. Time, Midday. 

In silent horror o'er the boundless waste 
The driver Hassan with his camels past : 
One cruise of water on his back he bore, 
And his light scrip contain'd a scanty store ; 
A fan of painted feathers in his hand, 5 

To guard his shaded face from scorching sand. 
The sultry sun had gain'd the middle sky, 
And not a tree, and not an herb was nigh ; 
The beasts with pain their dusty way pursue ; 9 
Shrill roar'd the winds, and dreary was the view ! 
With desperate sorrow wild, the affrighted man 
Thrice sigh'd, thrice struck his breast, and thus 
began : 
i Sad was the hour, and luckless was the day, 
6 When first from Schiraz' walls I bent my way ! ' 

VARIATION. 

Ver. 1. In silent horror o ? er the desert waste 



8 ECLOGUE II. 

6 Ah ! little thought I of the blasting wind, 15 
The thirst, or pinching hunger, that I find ! 
Bethink thee, Hassan, where shall thirst assuage, 
When fails this cruise, his unrelenting rage ? 
Soon shall this scrip its precious load resign ; 19 
Then what but tears and hunger shall be thine ? 

' Ye mute companions of my toils, that bear 
In all my griefs a more than equal share ! 
Here, where no springs in murmurs break away, 
Or moss-crown' d fountains mitigate the day, 
In vain ye hope the green delights to know, 25 
Which plains more blest, or verdant vales bestow : 
Here rocks alone, and tasteless sands, are found, 
And faint and sickly winds for ever howl around. 
' Sad was the hour, and luckless was the day, 29 
6 When first from Schiraz' walls I bent my way ! f 

i Curst be the gold and silver which persuade 
Weak men to follow far fatiguing trade ! 
The lily peace outshines the silver store, 
And life is dearer than the golden ore-: 
Yet money tempts us o'er the desert brown, 35 
To every distant mart and wealthy town. 
Full oft we tempt the land, and oft the sea ; 
And are we only yet repaid by thee ? 
Ah ! why was ruin so attractive made*? 
Or why fond man so easily betray'd ? 40 

Why heed we not, whilst mad we haste along, 
The gentle voice of peace, or pleasure's song ? 



HASSAN. iJ 

Or wherefore think the flowery mountain's side, 
The fountain's murmurs, and the valley's pride, 
Why think we these less pleasing to behold 45 
Than dreary deserts, if they lead to gold ? 
6 Sad was the hour, and luckless was the day, 
6 When first from Schiraz' walls I bent my way ! ' 

' cease, my fears ! — all frantic as I go, 49 
When thought creates unnumber'd scenes of woe, 
What if the lion in his rage I meet ! — 
Oft in the dust I view his printed feet : 
And, fearful ! oft, when day's declining light 
Yields her pale empire to the mourner night, 54 
By hunger roused, he scours the groaning plain, 
Gaunt wolves and sullen tigers in his train : 
Before them Death with shrieks directs their way, 
Fills the wild yell, and leads them to their prey. 
6 Sad was the hour, and luckless was the day, 59 
' When first from Schiraz' walls I bent my way ! ' 

* At that dead hour the silent asp shall creep, 
If aught of rest I find, upon my sleep : 
Or some swoln serpent twist his scales around, 
And wake to anguish with a burning wound. 
Thrice happy they, the wise contented poor, 65 
From lust of wealth, and dread of death secure ! 
They tempt no deserts, and no griefs they find ; 
Peace rules the day, where reason rules the mind. 
1 Sad was the hour, and luckless was the day, 
6 When first from Schiraz' walls I bent my way ! ' 



10 ECLOGUE II. 

c hapless youth ! — for she thy love hath won, 
The tender Zara will be most undone ! 
Big swell'd my heart, and own'd the powerful maid, 
When fast she dropt her tears, as thus she said : 
" Farewell the youth whom sighs could not detain ; 
Whom Zara's breaking heart implored in vain ! 
Yet, as thou go'st, may every blast arise 
Weak and unfelt, as these rejected sighs ! 
Safe o'er the wild, no perils mayst thou see, 79 
No griefs endure, nor weep, false youth, like me." 
let me safely to the fair return, 
Say, with a kiss, she must not, shall not mourn ; 
O ! let me teach my heart to lose its fears, 
Kecaird by Wisdom's voice, and Zara's tears.' 

He said, and call'd on heaven to bless the day, 
When back to Schiraz' walls he bent his way. 86 



VAEIATION. 

Ver. 83. Go teach my heart to lose its painful fears. 



ECLOGUE ILL 

ABEA; OE, THE GEOKGIAN SULTANA. 
Scene, A forest. Time, The evening. 

In Georgia's land, where Tefflis' towers are seen, 
In distant view, along the level green, 
While evening dews enrich the glittering glade, 
And the tall forests cast a longer shade, 
What time 'tis sweet o'er fields of rice to stray, 5 
Or scent the breathing maize at setting day ; 
Amidst the maids of Zagen's peaceful grove, 
Emyra sung the pleasing cares of love. 

Of Abra first began the tender strain, 
Who led her youth with flocks upon the plain. 10 
At morn she came those willing flocks to lead, 
Where lilies rear them in the watery mead ; 
From early dawn the livelong hours she told, 
Till late at silent eve she penn'd the fold. 
Deep in the grove, beneath the secret shade, 15 
A various wreath of odorous flowers she made : 

Verses 5 and 6 were inserted in the second edition. 



12 ECLOGUE III. 

Gay-motley' d * pinks and sweet jonquils she 

chose, 
The violet blue that on the moss-bank grows ; 
All sweet to sense, the flaunting rose was there ; 
The finish'd chaplet well adorn'd her hair. 20 

Great Abbas chanced that fated morn to stray, 
By love conducted from the chase away ; 
Among the vocal vales he heard her song, 
And sought, the vales and echoing groves among ; 
At length he found, and woo'd the rural maid; 25 
She knew the monarch, and with fear obey'd. 
t Be every youth like royal Abbas moved, 
'And every Georgian maid like Abra loved!' 

The royal lover bore her from the plain ; 
Yet still her crook and bleating flock remain : 30 
Oft, as she went, she backward turn'd her view, 
And bade that crook and bleating flock adieu. 
Fair, happy maid ! to other scenes remove, 
To richer scenes of golden power and love ! 
Go leave the simple pipe and shepherd's strain ; 35 
With love delight thee, and with Abbas reign ! 
■ ' Be every youth like royal Abbas moved, 

' And every Georgian maid like Abra loved ! ' 



* That these flowers are found in very great abundance in 
some of the provinces of Persia, see the Modern History of 
the ingenious Mr. Salmon. C. 



ABRA. 13 

Yet, 'midst the blaze of courts, she fix'd her love 
On the cool fountain, or the shady grove ; 40 

Still, with the shepherd's innocence, her mind 
To the sweet vale, and flowery mead, inclined ; 
And oft as spring renew'd the plains with flowers, 
Breathed his soft gales, and led the fragrant hours, 
With sure return she sought the sylvan scene, 45 
The breezy mountains, and the forests green. 
Her maids around her moved, a duteous band ! 
Each bore a crook, all rural, in her hand : 
Some simple lay, of flocks and herds, they sung ; 
With joy the mountain and the forest rung. 50 
6 Be every youth like royal Abbas moved, 
6 And every Georgian maid like Abra loved ! * 

And oft the royal lover left the care 
And thorns of state, attendant on the fair ; 
Oft to the shades and low-roof 'd cots retired, 55 
Or sought the vale where first his heart was fired : 
A russet mantle, like a swain, he wore, 
And thought of crowns, and busy courts, no more. 
' Be every youth like royal Abbas moved, 
6 And every Georgian maid like Abra loved ! ' 60 

Blest was the life that royal Abbas led : 
Sweet was his love, and innocent his bed. 
What if in wealth the noble maid excel ? 
The simple shepherd girl can love as well. 
Let those who rule on Persia's jewel'd throne 65 
Be famed for love, and gentlest love alone ; 



14 ECLOGUE III. 

Or wreathe, like Abbas, full of fair renown, 

The lover's myrtle with the warrior's crown. 

happy days ! the maids around her say ; 

haste, profuse of blessings, haste away! TO 

i Be every youth like royal Abbas moved, 
( And every Georgian maid like Abra loved!' 



ECLOGUE IV. 

AGIB AND SECANDER ; OR, THE FUGITIVES. 

Scene, A mountain in Circassia. 
Time, Midnight. 

In fair Circassia, where, to love inclined, 
Each swain was blest, for every maid was kind ; 
At that still hour, when awful midnight reigns, 
And none, but wretches, haunt the twilight plains ; 
What time the moon had hung her lamp on high, 5 
And past in radiance through the cloudless sky ; 
Sad, o'er the dews, two brother shepherds fled, 
Where wildering fear and desperate sorrow led : 
Fast as they press'd their flight, behind them lay 
Wide ravaged plains, and valleys stole away : 10 
Along the mountain's bending sides they ran, 
Till, faint and weak, Secander thus began. 

SECANDER. 

O stay thee, Agib, for my feet deny, 
No longer friendly to my life, to fly. 
Friend of my heart, turn thee and survey ! 15 
Trace our sad flight through all its length of way 



16 ECLOGUE IV. 

And first review that long extended plain, 
And yon wide groves, already past with pain ! 
Yon ragged cliff, whose dangerous path we tried ! 
And, last, this lofty mountain's weary side ! 20 

AGIB. 

Weak as thou art, yet, hapless, must thou know 
The toils of flight, or some severer woe ! 
Still, as I haste, the Tartar shouts behind, 
And shrieks and sorrows load the saddening wind : 
In rage of heart, with ruin in his hand, 25 

He blasts our harvests, and deforms our land. 
Yon citron grove, whence first in fear we came, 
Droops its fair honors to the conquering flame : 
Far fly the swains, like us, in deep despair, 
And leave to ruffian bands their fleecy care. 30 

SECANDER. 

Unhappy land, whose blessings tempt the sword, 
In vain, unheard, thou call'st thy Persian lord ! 
In vain thou court'st him, helpless, to thine aid, 
To shield the shepherd, and protect the maid ! 
Far off, in thoughtless indolence resign'd, 35 

Soft dreams of love and pleasure soothe his mind: 
'Midst fair sultanas lost in idle joy, 
No wars alarm him, and no fears annoy. 

AGIB. 

Yet these green hills, in summer's sultry heat, 
Have lent the monarch oft a cool retreat. 40 



THE FUGITIVES. 17 

Sweet to the sight is Zabran's flowery plain, 
And once by maids and shepherds loved in vain ! 
No more the virgins shall delight to rove 
By Sargis' banks, or Irwan's shady grove ; 
On Tarkie's mountain catch the cooling gale, 45 
Or breathe the sweets of Aly's flowery vale : 
Fair scenes ! but, ah ! no more with peace possest, 
With ease alluring, and with plenty blest ! 
No more the shepherds 5 whitening tents appear, 
Nor the kind products of a bounteous year ; 50 
No more the date, with snowy blossoms crown'd ! 
But ruin spreads her baleful fires around. 

SECANDER. 

In vain Circassia boasts her spicy groves, 
For ever famed for pure and happy loves : 
In vain she boasts her fairest of the fair, 55 

Their eyes' blue languish, and their golden hair ! 
Those eyes in tears their fruitless grief must send ; 
Those hairs the Tartar's cruel hand shall rend. 

AGIB. 

Ye Georgian swains, that piteous learn from far 
Circassia's ruin, and the waste of war ; 60 

Some weightier arms than crooks and staves prepare, 
To shield your harvests, and defend your fair : 

VARIATIONS. 

Ver. 49. No more the shepherds' whitening seats appear, 
"61. No more the dale, with snowy blossoms crown'd 1 



18 AGIB AND SECANDER. 

The Turk and Tartar like designs pursue, 

Fix'd to destroy, and steadfast to undo. 

Wild as his land, in native deserts bred, 66 

By lust incited, or by malice led, 

The villain Arab, as he prowls for prey, 

Oft marks with blood and wasting flames the way ; 

Yet none so cruel as the Tartar foe, 

To death inured, and nurst in scenes of woe. 70 

He said ; when loud along the vale was heard 
A shriller shriek, and nearer fires appear'd : 
The affrighted shepherds, through the dews of night, 
Wide o'er the moonlight hills renew'd their flight. 



END OF THE ECLOGUES. 



ODES 

ON SEVERAL DESCRIPTIVE AND 
ALLEGORICAL SUBJECTS. 



Eit)v €vpv(rie7rr)s avayeiaOai 
Upocr(j>opos iv Moiaav dicppcp ; 
ToX/xa de kcli dfMfriXacjirjs dvvafxis 
EaTrotro. Uivbap. OXv/itt. Q. 



ODES. 



ODE TO PITY. 

thou, the friend of man, assign'd 
With balmy hands his wounds to bind, 

And charm his frantic woe : 
When first Distress, with dagger keen, 
Broke forth to waste his destined scene, 5 

His wild unsated foe ! 

By Pella's * bard, a magic name, 

By all the griefs his thought could frame, 

Receive my humble rite : 
Long, Pity, let the nations view 10 

ThtiJ sky-worn robes of tenderest blue, 

And eyes of dewy light ! 



* Euripides, of whom Aristotle pronounces, on a com- 
parison of him with Sophocles, that he was the greater master 
of the tender passions, r\v t pay lk&t epos. C. 



22 ODES. 

But wherefore need I wander wide 
To old Hissus' distant side, 

Deserted stream, and mute ? 15 

Wild Aran * too has heard thy strains, 
And Echo, 'midst my native plains, 

Been soothed by Pity's lute. 

There first the wren thy myrtles shed 

On gentlest Otway's infant head, 20 

To him thy cell was shown ; 
And while he sung the female heart, 
With youth's soft notes unspoiTd by art, 

Thy turtles mix'd their own. 

Come, Pity, come, by Fancy's aid, 25 

E'en now my thoughts, relenting maid, 

Thy temple's pride design : 
Its southern site, its truth complete, 
Shall raise a wild enthusiast heat 

In all who view the shrine. 30 

There Picture's toils shall well relate 
How chance, or hard involving fate, 

O'er mortal bliss prevail : 
The buskin'd Muse shall near her stand, 
And sighing prompt her tender hand, 35 

With each disastrous tale. 



* The river Aran runs by the village of Trotton in Sussex, 
where Otway had his birth. 



TO PITY. 23 

There let me oft, retired by day, 
In dreams of passion melt away, 

Allowed with thee to dwell : 
There waste the mournful lamp of night, 40 
Till, Virgin, thou again delight 

To hear a British shell ! 



24 



ODE TO FEAB. 

Thou, to whom the world unknown, 
With all its shadowy shapes, is shown; 
Who seest, appall' d, the unreal scene, 
While Fancy lifts the veil between : 

Ah Fear ! ah frantic Fear ! 5 

I see, I see thee near. 
I know thy hurried step, thy haggard eye ! 
Like thee I start ; like thee disordered fly. 
For, lo, what monsters in thy train appear! 
Danger, whose limbs of giant mould 10 

What mortal eye can fix'd behold ? 
Who stalks his round, an hideous form, 
Howling amidst the midnight storm ; 
Or throws him on the ridgy steep 
Of some loose hanging rock to sleep : 15 

And with him thousand phantoms join'd, 
Who prompt to deeds accursed the mind : 
And those, the fiends, who, near allied, 
O'er Nature's wounds, and wrecks, preside ; 
Whilst Vengeance, in the lurid air, 20 

Lifts her red arm, exposed and bare : 
On whom that ravening* brood of Fate, 
Who lap the blood of sorrow, wait : 

* Alluding to the Kvvas a<fivKTovs of Sophocles. See 
the Electra. C 



TO FEAR. 25 



Who, Fear, this ghastly train can see, 

And look not madly wild, like thee ! 25 

EPODE. 

In earliest Greece, to thee, with partial choice, 
The grief-full Muse addrest her infant tongue ; 

The maids and matrons, on her awful voice, 
Silent and pale, in wild amazement hung. 

Yet he, the bard * who first invoked thy name, 30 
Disdain'd in Marathon its power to feel : 

For not alone he nursed the poet's flame, 

But reach'd from Virtue's hand the patriot's 
steel. 

But who is he whom later garlands grace, 

Who left a while o'er Hybla's dews to rove, 35 

With trembling eyes thy dreary steps to trace, 
Where thou and furies shared the baleful grove? 

Wrapt in thy cloudy veil, the incestuous f queen 
Sigh'd the sad call { her son and husband heard, 

When once alone it broke the silent scene, 40 

And he the wretch of Thebes no more appear'd. 

* jEschylus. C. f Jocasta. C. 

J ot>S' €T copdopei /3o?5, 

Hi> fiev (TLcairr} • cf)Seyfxa 8' iija'i<fivr)s twos 
Qa>v£;€v clvtoVi wore ttclvtcls opdias 
Sr^crat <p6fico beiaavras i£ai(j)vr)s rpl\as. 

See the (Edip. Colon, of Sophocles. C. 



26 ODES. 

Fear, I know thee by my throbbing heart : 
Thy withering power inspired each mournful 
line: 

Though gentle Pity claim her mingled part, 
Yet all the thunders of the scene are thine ! 45 

ANTISTROPHE. 

Thou who such weary lengths hast past, 

Where wilt thou rest, mad Nymph, at last ? 

Say, wilt thou shroud in haunted cell, 

Where gloomy Rape and Murder dwell ? 

Or, in some hollow'd seat, • 50 

'Gainst which the big waves beat, 

Hear drowning seamen's cries, in tempests brought? 

Dark power, with shuddering meek submitted 
thought, 

Be mine to read the visions old 

Which thy awakening bards have told : 55 

And, lest thou meet my blasted view. 

Hold each strange tale devoutly true ; 

Ne'er be I found, by thee o ? erawed, 

In that thrice hallow'd eve, abroad, 

When ghosts, as cottage maids believe, 00 

Their pebbled beds permitted leave ; 

And goblins haimt, from fire, or fen, 

Or mine, or flood, the walks of men ! 

O thou, whose spirit most posse st 
The sacred seat of Shakespeare's breast ! 55 



TO FEAR. 27 

B y all that from thy prophet broke, 

In thy divine emotions spoke ; 

Hither again thy fury deal, 

Teach me but once like him to feel : 

His cypress wreath my meed decree, 70 

And I, Fear, will dwell with thee ! 



28 



ODE TO SIMPLICITY. 



thou, by Nature taught 

To breathe her genuine thought, 
In numbers warmly pure, and sweetly strong ; 

Who first, on mountains wild, 

In Fancy, loveliest child, 5 

Thy babe, or Pleasure's, nursed the powers of song! 

Thou, who, with hermit heart, 

Disdain'st the wealth of art, 
And gauds, and pageant weeds, and trailing pall ; 

But com'st a decent maid, 10 

In attic robe array'd, 
chaste, unboastful Nymph, to thee I call ! 

By all the honey'd store 

On Hybla's thymy shore ; 14 

By all her blooms, and mingled murmurs dear ; 

By her* whose lovelorn woe, 

In evening musings slow, 
Soothed sweetly sad Electra's poet's ear : 

* The ar] Scqv, or nightingale, for which Sophocles seems 
to have entertained a peculiar fondness. C. 



TO SIMPLICITY. 29 

By old Cephisus deep, 

Who spread his wavy sweep, 20 

In warbled wanderings, round thy green retreat ; 

On whose enamel'd side, 

When holy Freedom died, 
No equal haunt allured thy future feet. 

O sister meek of Truth, 25 

To my admiring youth, 
Thy sober aid and native charms infuse ! 

The flowers that sweetest breathe, 

Though Beauty cull'd the wreath, 
Still ask thy hand to range their order'd hues. 30 

While Rome could none esteem 

But virtue's patriot theme, 
You lov'd her hills, and led her laureat band : 

But staid to sing alone 

To one distinguish'd throne ; 35 

And turn'd thy face, and fled her alter'd land. 

No more, in hall or bower, 

The Passions own thy power, 
Love, only Love her forceless numbers mean : 

For thou hast left her shrine ; 40 

Nor olive more, nor vine, 
Shall gain thy feet to bless the servile scene. 

Though tast3, though genius, bless 
To some divine excess, 



30 ODES. 

Faints the cold work till thou inspire the whole ; 

What each, what all supply, A 46 

May court, may charm, our eye ; 
Thou, only thou, canst raise the meeting soul ! 

Of these let others ask, 

To aid some mighty task, 60 

I only seek to find thy temperate vale ; 

Where oft my reed might sound 

To maids and shepherds round, 
And all thy sons, Nature, learn my tale. 



31 



ODE ON THE POETICAL CHARACTER. 

As once, — if, not with light regard, 

I read aright that gifted bard, 

— Him whose school above the rest 

His loveliest elfin queen has blest ; — 

One, only one, unrival'd* fair, 5 

Might hope the magic girdle wear, 

At solemn turney hung on high, 

The wish of each love-darting eye ; 

— -*Lo ! to each other nymph, in turn, applied, 
As if, in air unseen, some hovering hand, 10 

Some chaste and angel friend to virgin fame, 
With whisper'd spell had burst the starting band, 

It left unblest her loathed dishonour'd side ; 
Happier, hopeless Fair, if never 
Her baffled hand, with vain endeavour, 15 

Had touch'd that fatal zone to her denied ! 

Young Fancy thus, to me divinest name, 
To whom, prepared and bathed in heaven, 
The cest of amplest power is given : 
To few the godlike gift assigns, 20 

To gird their blest prophetic loins, 

And gaze her visions wild, and feel unmix'd her 
flame ! 

* Florimel. See Spenser, Leg. 4th. C. 



32 ODES. 

The band, as fairy legends say, 

Was wove on that creating day, 

When He, who call'd with thought to birth 25 

Yon tented sky, this laughing earth, 

And dress'd with springs and forests tall, 

And pour'd the main engirting all, 

Long by the loved enthusiast woo'd, 

Himself in some diviner mood, 30 

Retiring, sat with her alone, 

And placed her on his sapphire throne ; 

The whiles, the vaulted shrine around, 

Seraphic wires were heard to sound, 

Now sublimest triumph swelling, 35 

Now on love and mercy dwelling ; 

And she, from out the veiling cloud, 

Breathed her magic notes aloud : 

And thou, thou rich-hair'd youth of morn, 

And all thy subject life was born ! 40 

The dangerous passions kept aloof, 

Far from the sainted growing woof: 

But near it sat ecstatic Wonder, 

Listening the deep applauding thunder ; 

And Truth, in sunny vest array'd, 45 

By whose the tarsel's eyes were made ; 

All the shadowy tribes of mind, 

In braided dance, their murmurs join'd, 

And all the bright uncounted powers 

Who feed on heaven's ambrosial flowers. 60 

— Where is the bard whose soul can now 

Its high presuming hopes avow ? 



ON THE POETICAL CHARACTER. 33 

Where he who thinks^ with rapture blind, 
This hallow'd work for him design'd ? 

High on some cliff, to heaven up-piled, 55 

Of rude access, of prospect wild, 

Where, tangled round the jealous steep, 

Strange shades o'erbrow the valleys deep, 

And holy Genii guard the rock, 

Its glooms embrown, its springs unlock, 60 

While on its rich ambitious head, 

An Eden, like his own, lies spread : 

I view that oak, the fancied glades among, 

By which, as Milton lay, his evening ear, 

From many a cloud that dropp'd ethereal dew, 65 

Nigh sphered in heaven, its native strains could 

hear; 
On which that ancient trump he reach'd was hung : 
Thither oft, his glory greeting, 
From Waller's myrtle shades retreating, 
With many a vow from Hope's aspiring tongue, 
My trembling feet his guiding steps pursue ; 71 
In vain — Such bliss to one alone, 
Of all the sons of soul, was know\i ; 
And Heaven, and Fancy, kindred powers, 
Have now o'erturn'd the inspiring bowers ; 75 

Or curtain'd close such scene from every future 
view. 



34 



ODE, 

WRITTEN IN THE BEGINNING OF THE YEAR 1746. 

How sleep the brave, who sink to rest. 
By all their country's wishes bless'd ! 
When Spring, with dewy fingers cold, 
Returns to deck their hallow'd mould, 
She there shall dress a sweeter sod 5 

Than Fancy's feet have ever trod. 

By fairy hands their knell is rung ; 

By forms unseen their dirge is sung ; 

There Honour comes, a pilgrim gray, 

To bless the turf that wraps their clay 5 - 10 

And Freedom shall awhile repair, 

To dwell a weeping hermit there ! 

VARIATIONS. 

Ver. 5. She then shall dress a sweeter sod 

7. By hands unseen the knell is rung j 

8. By fairy forms their dirge is suDg; 



35 



ODE TO MERCY. 



STROPHE. 



Thou, who sitt'st a smiling bride 

By Valour's arm'd and awful side, 
Gentlest of sky-born forms, and best adored ; 

Who oft with songs, divine to hear, 

Winn'st from his fatal grasp the spear, 5 

And hidest in wreaths of flowers his bloodless sword I 

Thou who, amidst the deathful field, 

By godlike chiefs alone beheld, 
Oft with thy bosom bare art found, 9 

Pleading for him the youth who sinks to ground: 

See, Mercy, see, with pure and loaded hands, 

Before thy shrine my country's genius stands, 
And decks thy altar still, though pierced with 
many a wound. 

ANTISTROPHE. 

When he whom even our joys provoke, 

The fiend of nature join'd Ins yoke, 15 

And rush'd in wrath to make our isle his prey ; 

Thy form, from out thy sweet abode, 

O'ertook him on his blasted road, 
And stopp'd his wheels, and look'd his rage away. 



36 ODES. 

I see recoil Lis sable steeds, 20 

That bore hini swift to salvage deeds, 

Thy tender melting eyes they own ; 

O maid, for all thy love to Britain shown, 
Where Justice bars her iron tower, 
To thee we build a roseate bower ; 25 

Thou, thou shalt rule our queen, and share our 
monarch's tlirone ! 



! 



37 



ODE TO LIBEETY. 



STROPHE. 



Who shall awake the Spartan fife, 

And call in solemn sounds to life, 
The youths, whose locks divinely spreading, 

Like vernal hyacinths in sullen hue, 
At once the breath of fear and virtue shedding, 5 

Applauding Freedom loved of old to view ? 
What new Alcasus,* fancy-blest, 
Shall sing the sword, in myrtles drest, 

* Alluding to that beautiful fragment of Alcseus : 

Ei> fxvprov ickabl to £j[(f)os (froprjcrcD, 
Qo"iT€p Apuodios k ApLOToyeiTcov, 
Ore rbv rvpavvov Kraverrjv* 
Icrovofjiovs r ABrjvas €7TOLr]crdrr]v. 
QCkraQ* App.6dL ov tl ttov re6vr]Kas, 
Nrjaois 6° iv fxciKapcdV (T€ <pacr\v eirat, 
Ira 7T€p 7ro8a>K.r)s A^Xevs, 
TvfteLdrjv re <j)ao~Lv AiOfirjftea. 
Ev fjLvprov icXaftl rb £i(j)os (fioprjo'CD, 

Q(JTT€p ApflSdlOS K Api<JTOy€lT(DV , 

Or' A6r)vaLT]s iv 8vo~lclls 
Avbpa rvpavvov l777rap^ov €Kaiverr)V. 
Ae\ crcpcbv icXeos ecraerai kclt aiav, 
&iXra6 Ap/Lto8t€, k Apicrroyeircov, 
Ort rov rvpavvov Krdverov, 
Io~ov6jjlovs t A6r]vas i r noir\o~arov . 



Ob ODES. 

At Wisdom's shrine awhile its flame concealing, 
(What place so fit to seal a deed renown'd ?) 10 
Till she her brightest lightnings round revealing, 
It leap'd in glory forth, and dealt her prompted 
wound I 
goddess, in that feeling hour, 
When most its sounds would court thy ears, 
Let not my shell's misguided power * 15 
E'er draw thy sad, thy mindful tears. 
No, Freedom, no, I will not tell 
How Rome, before thy weeping face, 
With heaviest sound, a giant-statue, fell, 
Push'd by a wild and artless race 20 

From off its wide ambitious base, 
When Time his northern sons of spoil awoke, 
And all the blended work of strength and grace, 
With many a rude repeated stroke, 
And many a barbarous yell, to thousand fragments 
broke. 25 

EPODE. 

Yet, even where'er the least appear'd, 
The admiring world thy hand revered ; 
Still, 'midst 'the scatter'd states around, 
Some remnants of her strength were found ; 
They saw, by what escaped the storm, 30 

How wondrous rose her perfect form ; 

* Mr} firj ravTa Xeycofies, a d&Kpvov fjyaye A7701. 

Callimacli. "Yfxvos ds Arj^rpa. C. 



TO LIBERTY. 39 

How in the great, the labour'd whole, 

Each mighty master pour'd his soul ! 

For sunny Florence, seat of art, 

Beneath her vines preserved a part, 35 

Till they,* whom Science loved to name, 

(0 who could fear it ?) quench'd her flame. 

And lo, an humbler relic laid a 

In jealous Pisa's olive shade ! 

See small Marino f joins the theme, 40 

Though least, not last in thy esteem : 

Strike, louder strike the ennobling strings 

To those, I whose merchant sons were kings ; 

To him,§ who, deck'd with pearly pride, 

In Adria weds his green-hair'd bride ; 45 

Hail, port of glory, wealth, and pleasure, 

Ne'er let me change this Lydian measure : 

Nor e'er her former pride relate, 

To sad Liguria's || bleeding state. 

Ah no ! more pleased thy haunts I seek, 50 

On -wild Helvetia's T mountains bleak : 

(Where, when the favour'd of thy choice, 

The daring archer heard thy voice ; 

Forth from his eyrie roused in dread, 

The ravening eagle northward fled :) 66 

* The family of the Medici. C. 
t The little republic of San Marino. 0. 
$ The Venetians. C. 
§ The Doge of Venice. C. 
|| Genoa. C. ^[ Switzerland. 0. 

8 



40 ODES. 

Or dwell in willow'd meads more near. 

With those to whom thy stork* is dear : 

Those whom the rod of Alva bruised, 

Whose crown a British queen f refused ! 

The magic works, thou feel'st the strains, GO 

One holier name alone remains ; 

The perfect spell shall then avail, 

Hail, nymph, adored by Britain, hail ! 

ANTISTROPHE. 

Beyond the measure vast of thought, 

The works the wizard time has wrought ! 65 

The Gaul, 'tis held of antique story, 
Saw Britain link'd to his now adverse strand,J 

No sea between, nor cliff sublime and hoary, 
He pass'd with unwet feet through all our land. 

To the blown Baltic then, they say, 70 

The wild waves found another way, 

* The Dutch, amongst whom there are very severe penal- 
ties for those who are convicted of killing this bird. They 
are kept tame in almost all their towns, and particularly at 
the Hague, of the arms of which they make a part. The 
common people of Holland are said to entertain a supersti- 
tious sentiment, that if the whole species of them should be- 
come extinct, they should lose their liberties. C. 

f Queen Elizabeth. C. 

X This tradition is mentioned by several of our old histo- 
rians. Some naturalists too have endeavoured to support the 
probability of the fact by arguments drawn from the corre- 
spondent disposition of the two opposite coasts. I do not 
remember that any poetical use has been hitherto made of it. 
C. . 



TO LIBERTY. 41 

Where Orcas howls, his wolfish mountains round- 
ing; 
Till all the banded west at once 'gan rise, 
A wide wild storm even nature's self confounding, 
Withering her giant sons with strange uncouth 
surprise. 75 

This pillar'd earth so firm and wide, 

By winds and inward labours torn, - 
In thunders dread was push'd aside, 

And down the shouldering billows borne. 
And see, like gems, her laughing train, SO 

The little isles on every side, 
Mona,* once hid from those who search the main, 

Where thousand elfin shapes abide, 
And Wight who checks the westering tide, 

For thee consenting heaven has each bestowed, 85 
A fair attendant on her sovereign pride : 

To thee this blest divorce she owed, 
For thou hast made her vales thy loved, thy last 
abode ! 



* There is a tradition in the Isle of Man, that a mermaid 
becoming enamoured of a young man of extraordinary beauty 
took an opportunity of meeting him one day as he walked on 
the shore, and opened her passion to him, but was received 
with a coldness, occasioned by his horror and surprise at her 
appearance. This, however, was so misconstrued by the sea 
lady, that, in revenge for his treatment of her, she punished 
the whole island by covering it with a mist : so that all who 
attempted to carry on any commerce with it, either never 
arrived at it, but wandered up and down the sea, or were on 
a sudden wrecked upon its cliffs. C. 



42 ODES. 

SECOND EPODE. 

Then too, 'tis said, an hoary pile, 

'Midst the green navel of our isle, 90 

Thy shrine in some religious wood, 

O soul-enforcing goddess, stood ! 

There oft the painted native's feet 

Were wont thy form celestial meet : 

Though now with hopeless toil we trace 95 

Time's backward rolls, to find its place ; 

Whether the fiery-tressed Dane, 

Or Roman's self o'erturn'd the fane, 

Or in what heaven-left age it fell, 

'Twere hard for modern song to tell. 100 

Yet still, if Truth those beams infuse, 

Which guide at once, and charm the Muse, 

Beyond yon braided clouds that lie, 

Paving the light embroider'd sky, 

Amidst the bright pavilion'd plains, 105 

The beauteous model still remains. 

There, happier than in islands blest, 

Or bowers by spring or Hebe drest, 

The chiefs who fill our Albion's story, 

In warlike weeds, retired in glory, t 110 

Hear their consorted Druids sing 

Their triumphs to the immortal string. 

How may the poet now unfold 
What never tongue or numbers told ? 
How learn delighted, and amazed, 115 

What hands unknown that fabric raised ? 



TO LIBERTY. 43 

Even now before his favour'd eyes, 

In gothic pride, it seems to rise ! 

Yet Graecia's graceful orders join, 

Majestic through the mix'd design : 120 

The secret builder knew to choose 

Each sphere-found gem of richest hues ; 

Whate'er heaven's purer mould contains, . 

When nearer suns emblaze its veins ; 

There on the walls the patriot's sight 125 

May ever hang with fresh delight, • 

And, graved with some prophetic rage, 

Read Albion's fame through every age. 

Ye forms divine, ye laureat band, 
That near her inmost altar stand ! 130 

Now soothe her to her blissful train 
Blithe Concord's social form to gain ; 
Concord, whose myrtle wand can steep 
Even Anger's bloodshot eyes in sleep ; 
Before whose breathing bosom's balm 135 

Rage drops his steel, and storms grow calm : 
Her let our sires and matrons hoar 
Welcome to Briton's ravaged shore ; 
Our youths, enamour'd of the fair, 
Play with the tangles of her hair, 140 

Till, in one loud applauding sound, 
The nations shout to her around, 
how supremely art thou blest, 
Thou, lady — thou shalt rule the west ! 



44 



ODE TO A LADY, 

ON THE DEATH OF COLONEL ROSS, IN THE ACTION OF 
FONTENOY. 

Written in May, 1745. 

"While, lost to all his former mirth, 
Britannia's genius bends to earth, 

And mourns the fatal day : 
While stain'd with blood he strives to tear 
Unseemly from his sea-green hair 6 

The wreaths of cheerful May : 

The thoughts which musing Pity pays, 
And fond Remembrance loves to raise, 

Your faithful hours attend ; 
Still Fancy, to herself unkind, 10 

Awakes to grief the soften'd mind, 

And points the bleeding friend. 

By rapid Scheid's descending wave 
His country's vows shall bless the grave, 

VARIATION. 

Ver. 4. While sunk in grisf he strives to tear 



ON THE DEATH OF COLONEL ROSS. 45 

Where'er the youth is laid : 15 

That sacred spot the village hind 
With every sweetest turf shall bind, 

And Peace protect the shade. 

Blest youth, regardful of thy doom, 

Aerial hands shall build thy tomb, 20 

With shadowy trophies crown'd ; 
Whilst Honour bathed in tears shall rove 
To sigh thy name through every grove, 

And call his heroes round. 

The warlike dead of every age, 25 

Who fill the fair recording page, 

Shall leave their sainted rest ; 
And, half reclining on his spear, 
Each wondering chief by turns appear, 

To hail the blooming guest : 30 

VARIATIONS. 

Ver. 19. E'en now regardful of his doom 

Applauding Honour haunts his tomb, 
With shadowy trophies crown'd : 
Whilst Freedom's form beside her roves, 
Majestic through the twilight groves, 
And calls her heroes round. 

19. O'er him, whose doom thy virtues grieve, 
Aerial forms shall sit at eve, 

And bend the pensive head ; 
And, fallen to save his injured land, 
Imperial Honour's awful hand 

Shall point his lonely bed. 



46 ODES. 

Old Edward's sons, unknown to yield, 
Shall crowd from Cressy's laurel'd field, 

And gaze with fix'd delight ; 
Again for Britain's wrongs they feel, 
Again they snatch the gleamy steel, 35 

And wish the avenging fight. 

But lo, where, sunk in deep despair, 
Her garments torn, her bosom bare, 

Impatient Freedom lies ! 
Her matted tresses madly spread, 40 

To every sod, which wraps the dead, 

She turns her joyless eyes. 

Ne'er shall she leave that lowly ground 
Till notes of triumph bursting round 

Proclaim her reign restored : 45 

Till William seek the sad retreat, 
And, bleeding at her sacred feet, 

Present the sated sword. 

If, weak to soothe so soft a heart, 

These pictured glories nought impart, 50 

To dry thy constant tear : 
If, yet, in Sorrow's distant eye, 
Exposed and pale thou see'st him lie, 

Wild War insulting near : 

VARIATIONS. 

Ver. 31. Old Edward's sons, untaught to yield, 
49. If, drawn by all a lover's art, 



ON THE DEATH OF COLONEL ROSS. 47 

Where'er from time thou court'st relief, 55 

The Muse shall still, with social grief, 

Her gentlest promise keep ; 
Even humbled Harting's cottaged vale * 
Shall learn the sad repeated tale, 

And bid her shepherds weep. 60 

VARIATION. 

Ver. 58. Even humble Harting's cottaged vale 

* Harting, a village adjoining the parish of Trotton, and 
about two miles distaDt from it. 



48 



ODE TO EVENING. 



If aught of oaten stop, or pastoral song, 

May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear, 

Like thy own brawling springs, 

Thy springs, and dying gales ; 4 

Nymph reserved, while now the bright-hair'd sun 
Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts, 

With brede ethereal wove, 

O'erhang his wavy bed : 

Now air is hush'd, save where the weak-eyed bat 
"With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing ; 

Or where the beetle winds 

His small but sullen horn, 



VARIATIONS. 

Ver 2. May hope, pensive Eve, to soothe thine ear, 
3. Like thy own solemn springs, 
9. While air is hush'd, save where the weak-eyed bat 



TO EVENING. 49 

As oft he rises 'midst the twilight path, 
Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum : 

Now teach me, maid composed, 15 

To breathe some soften'd strain, 

Whose numbers, stealing through thy darkening 

vale, 
May not unseemly with its stillness suit ; 

As, musing slow, I hail 

Thy genial loved return ! 20 

For when thy folding-star arising shows 
His paly circlet, at his warning lamp 

The fragrant Hours, and Elves 

Who slept in buds the day, 

And many a Nymph who wreathes her brows with 
sedge, 25 

And sheds the freshening dew, and, lovelier still, 

The pensive Pleasures sweet, 

Prepare thy shadowy car. 

Then let me rove some wild and heathy scene ; 
Or find some ruin, 'midst its dreary dells, 30 



VARIATIONS. 

Ver. 24. Who slept in flowers the day, 

29. Then lead, calm vot'ress, where some sheety lake 
. Cheers the lone heath, or some time-hallow 'd pile, 



50 ODES. 

Whose walls more awful nod 
By thy religious gleams. 

Or, if chill blustering winds, or driving rain, 
Prevent my willing feet, be mine the hut, 

That, from the mountain's side, 35 

Yiews wilds, and swelling floods, 

And hamlets brown, and dim-discover'd spires ; 
And hears their simple bell, and marks o'er all 

Thy dewy fingers draw 

The gradual dusky veil. 40 

While Spring shall pour his showers, as oft he 

wont, 
And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest Eve ! 

While Summer loves to sport 

Beneath thy lingering light ; 

While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves ; 45 
Or Winter, yelling through the troublous air, 

Affrights thy shrinking train, 

And rudely rends thy robes ; 

VARIATIONS. 

Ver. 31. Or upland fallows grey, 

Keflect its last cool gleam. 
33. But when chill blustering winds, or driving rain, 
Forbid my willing feet, be mine the hut, 



TO EVENING. 51 

So long, regardful of thy quiet rule, 49 

Shall Fancy, Friendship, Science, smiling Peace, 

Thy gentlest influence own, 

And love thy favourite name ! 

VARIATION. 

Ver. 49. So long, sure-found beneath the sylvan shed, 

Shall Fancy, Friendship, Science, rose-lipp'd Health, 
Thy gentlest influence own, 
And hymn thy favourite name ! 



52 



ODE TO PEACE. 



thou, who bad'st thy turtles bear 
Swift from his grasp thy golden hair, 

And sought'st thy native skies ; 
When War, by vultures drawn from far, 
To Britain bent his iron car, 5 

And bade his storms arise ! 

Tired of his rude tyrannic sway, 
Our youth shall fix some festive day, 

His sullen shrines to burn : 
But thou who hear'st the turning spheres, 10 
What sounds may charm thy partial ears, 

And gain thy blest return ! 

O Peace, thy injured robes up-bind ! 
O rise ! and leave not one behind 

Of all thy beamy train ; 15 

The British Lion, goddess sweet, 
Lies stretched on earth to kiss thy feet, 

And own thy holier reign. 



TO PEACE. 53 

Let others court thy transient smile, 

But come to grace thy western isle. 20 

By warlike Honour led ; 
And, while around her ports rejoice, 
While all her sons adore thy choice, 

With him for ever wed ! 



54 



THE MANNERS. 



AN ODE. 



Farewell, for clearer ken design'd, 

The dim-discover' cl tracts of mind ; 

Truths which, from action's paths retired, 

My silent search in vain required ! 

No more my sail that deep explores ; 5 

No more I search those magic shores ; 

What regions part the world of soul, 

Or whence thy streams, Opinion, roll : 

If e'er I round such fairy field, 

Some power impart the spear and shield, 10 

At which the wizard Passions fly ; 

By which the giant Follies die ! 

Farewell the porch whose roof is seen 
Arch'd with the enlivening olive's green : 
Where Science, prank'd in tissued vest, 15 

By Reason, Pride, and Fancy drest, 
Comes, like a bride, so trim array'd, 
To wed with Doubt in Plato's shade ! 

Youth of the quick uncheated sight, 
Thy walks, Observance, more invite ! 20 



THE MANNERS. 55 

O thou who lovest that ampler range, 

Where life's wide prospects round thee change, 

And, with her mingling sons allied, 

Throw'st the prattling page aside, 

To me, in converse sweet, impart 25 

To read in man the native heart ; 

To learn, where Science sure is found, 

From Nature as she lives around ; 

And, gazing oft her mirror true, 

By turns each shifting image view ! 30 

Till meddling Art's officious lore 

Reverse the lessons taught before ; 

Alluring from a safer rule, 

To dream in her enchanted school : 

Thou, Heaven, whate'er of great we boast, 35 

Hast blest this social science most. 

Retiring hence to thoughtful cell, 
As Fancy breathes her potent spell, 
iSTot vain she finds the charmful task, 
In pageant quaint, in motley mask ; 40 

Behold, before her musing eyes, 
The countless Manners round her rise ; 
While, ever varying as they pass, 
To some Contempt applies her glass : 
With these the white-robed maids combine ; 45 
And those the laughing satyrs join ! 
But who is he whom now she views, 
In robe of wild contendino; hues ? 



56 ODES. 

Thou by the Passions nursed, I greet 

The comic sock that binds thy feet ! 60 

O Humour, thou whose name is known 

To Britain's favour'd isle alone : 

Me too amidst thy band admit ; 

There where the young-eyed healthful Wit, 

(Whose jewels in his crisped hair 56 

Are placed each other's beams to share ; 

Whom no delights from thee divide) 

In laughter loosed, attends thy side. 

By old Miletus,* who so long 
Has ceased his love-inwoven song ; 60 

By all you taught the Tuscan maids, 
In changed Italia's modern shades ; 
By himf whose knight's distinguish'd name 
Refined a nation's lust of fame ; 
Whose tales e'en now, with echoes sweet, 65 

Castilia's Moorish hills repeat ; 
Or him J whom Seine's blue nymphs deplore, 
In watchet weeds on Gallia's shore ; 
Who drew the sad Sicilian maid, 
By virtues in her sire betray'd. 70 



* Alluding to the Milesian tales, some of the earliest ro- 
mances. C. 

f Cervantes. C. 

| Monsieur Le Sage, author of the incomparable Adven- 
tures of Gil Bias de Santillane, who died in Paris in the 
year 1745. C. 



THE MANNERS. 57 

Nature boon, from whom proceed 
Each forceful thought, each prompted deed ; 
If but from thee I hope to feel, 
On all my heart imprint thy seal ! 
Let some retreating cynic find 75 

Those oft-turn'd scrolls I leave behind : 
The Sports and I this hour agree, 
To rove thy scene-full world with thee ! 



58 



THE PASSIONS. 

AN ODE FOR MUSIC. 

Performed at Oxford, with Hayes's music, in 1750. 

When Music, heavenly maid, was young, 

While yet in early Greece she sung, 

The Passions oft, to hear her shell, 

Throng'd around her magic cell. 

Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting, 5 

Possest beyond the Muse's painting : 

By turns they felt the glowing mind 

Disturb'd, delighted, raised, refined ; 

Till once, 'tis said, when all were fired, 

Fill'd with fury, rapt, inspired, 10 

From the supporting myrtles round 

They snatch'd her instruments of sound ; 

And, as they oft had heard apart 

Sweet lessons of her forceful art, 

Each (for Madness ruled the hour) 15 

Would prove his own expressive power. 

First Fear his hand, its skill to try, 

Amid the chords bewilder'd laid, 
And back recoil'd, he knew not why, 

E'en at the sound himself had made. 20 



THE PASSIONS. 59 

Next Anger rush'd ; his eyes on fire, 
In lightnings own'd his secret stings : 

In one rude clash he struck the lyre, 

And swept with hurried hand the strings. 

With woful measures wan Despair 25 

Low, sullen sounds his grief beguiled ; 

A solemn, strange, and mingled air ; 
'Twas sad by fits, by starts 'twas wild. 

But thou, Hope, with eyes so fair, 

What was thy delighted measure ? 30 

Still it whisper'd promised pleasure, 

And bade the lovely scenes at distance hail ! 
Still would her touch the strain prolong ; 

And from the rocks, the woods, the vale, 
She call'd on Echo still, through all the song ; 35 
And, where her sweetest theme she chose, 
A soft responsive voice was heard at every close, 
And Hope enchanted smiled, and waved her golden 

hair. 
And longer had she sung ; — but, with a frown, 
Revenge impatient rose : 40 

He threw his blood-stain'd sword, in thunder, 
down ; 
And, with a withering look, 
The war-denouncing trumpet took, 

VARIATION. 

Ver. 30. What was thy delightful measure? 



60 -ODES. 

And blew a blast so loud and dread, 
"Were ne'er prophetic sounds so full of woe ! 45 
And, ever and anon, he beat 
The doubling drum, with furious heat ; 
And though sometimes, each dreary pause between, 
Dejected Pity, at his side, 
Her soul-subduing voice applied, 50 

Yet still he kept his wild unalter'd mein, 
While each strain'd ball of sight seem'd bursting 
* from his head. 
Thy numbers, Jealousy, to nought were fix'd ; 

Sad proof of thy distressful state ; 54 

Of differing themes the veering song was mix'd ; 
And now it courted Love, now raving calTd 
on Hate. 

With eyes upraised, as one inspired, 
Pale Melancholy sate retired ; 
And, from her wild sequester'd seat, 
In notes by distance made more sweet, 60 

Pour'd through the mellow horn her pensive soul : 
And, dashing soft from rocks around, 
Bubbling runnels join'd the sound ; 
Through glades and glooms the mingled measure 
stole, 64 

Or, o'er some haunted stream, with fond delay, 
Round an holy calm difiusing, 
Love of Peace, and lonely musing, 
In hollow murmurs died away. 



THE PASSIONS. 61 

But ! how alter'd was its sprightlier tone, 
When Cheerfulness, a nymph of healthiest hue, 

Her bow across her shoulder flung, 71 

Her buskins gemm'd with morning dew, 
Blew an inspiring air, that dale and thicket rung, 

The hunter's call, to Faun and Dryad known ! 
The oak-crown'd Sisters, and their chaste-eyed 
Queen, 75 

Satyrs and Sylvan Boys, were seen, 

Peeping from forth their alleys green : 
Brown Exercise rejoiced to hear ; 

And Sport leapt up, and seized his beechen spear. 
Last came Joy's ecstatic trial : 80 

He, with viny crown advancing, 

First to the lively pipe his hand addrest ; 
But soon he saw the brisk awakening viol, 

Whose sweet entrancing voice he loved the best ; 
They would have thought who heard the strain 85 

They saw, in Tempe's vale, her native maids, 

Amidst the festal sounding shades, 
To some unwearied minstrel dancing, 
While, as his flying fingers kiss'd the strings, 89 

Love framed with Mirth a gay fantastic round : 

Loose were her tresses seen, her zone unbound ; 

And he, amidst his frolic play, 

As if he would the charming air repay, 
Shook thousand odours from his dewy wings. 

Music! sphere-descended maid, 95 

Friend of Pleasure, Wisdom's aid ! 



62 ODES, 

"Why, goddess ! why, to us denied, 

Lay'st thou thy ancient lyre aside ? 

As, in that loved Athenian bower, 

You learn'd an all commanding power, 100 

Thy mimic soul, Nymph endear' d, 

Can well recall what then it heard ; 

Where is thy native simple heart, 

Devote to Virtue, Fancy, Art ? 

Arise, as in that elder time, 106 

Warm, energetic, chaste, sublime ! 

Thy wonders, in that godlike age, 

Fill thy recording Sister's page — 

'Tis said, and I believe the tale, 

Thy humblest reed could more prevail, 110 

Had more of strength, diviner rage, 

Than all which charms this laggard age ; 

E'en all at once together found, 

Cecilia's mingled world of sound — 

O bid our vain endeavours cease ; 115 

Revive the just designs of Greece : 

Return in all thy simple state ! 

Connrm the tales her sons relate ! 



63 



ODE ON THE DEATH OF THOMSON. 

THE SCENE IS SUPPOSED TO 
LIE ON THE THAMES NEAR RICHMOND. 



In yonder grave a Druid lies, 

Where slowly winds the stealing wave ; 

The year's best sweets shall duteous rise 
To deck its poet's sylvan grave. 

In yon deep bed of whispering reeds 6 

His airy harp* shall now be laid, 
That he, whose heart in sorrow bleeds, 

May love through life the soothing shade. 

Then maids and youths shall linger here, 

And while its sounds at distance swell, 10 

Shall sadly seem in pity's ear 

To hear the woodland pilgrim's knell. 

* The harp of iEolus, of which see a description in the 
Castle of Indolence. G. 



64 ODES. 

Remembrance oft shall haunt the shore 
When Thames in summer wreaths is drest, 

And oft suspend the dashing oar, 15 

To bid his gentle spirit rest ! 

And oft, as ease and health retire 

To breezy lawn, or forest deep, 
The friend shall view yon whitening* spire 

And 'mid the varied landscape weep. 20 

But thou, who own'st that earthy bed, 

Ah ! what will every dirge avail ; 
Or tears, which love and pity shed, 

That mourn beneath the gliding sail ? 

Yet lives there one, whose heedless eye 25 

Shall scorn thy pale shrine glimmering near ? 

With him, sweet bard, may fancy die, 
And joy desert the blooming year. 

But thou, lorn stream, whose sullen tide 

No sedge-crown'd sisters now attend, 30 

Now waft me from the green hill's side, 
Whose cold turf hides the buried friend ! 



VARIATION. 

Ver. 21. But thou who own'st that earthly bed, - 

* Richmond Church, in which Thomson was buried. C. 



ON THE DEATH OF THOMSON. 65 

And see, the. fairy valleys fade ; 

Dun night has veil'd the solemn view ! 
Yet once again, dear parted shade, 35 

Meek Nature's Child, again adieu ! 

The genial meads,* assign'd to bless 
Thy life, shall mourn thy early doom ; 

Their hinds and shepherd-girls shall dress, 

With simple hands, thy rural tomb. 40 

Long, long, thy stone and pointed clay 
Shall melt the musing Briton's eyes : 

! vales and wild woods, shall he say, 
In yonder grave your Druid lies ! 



* Mr. Thomson resided in the neighbourhood of Richmond 
some time before his death. 



66 




ODE ON THE POPULAK SUPERSTITIONS OF 
THE HIGHLANDS OF SCOTLAND ; 

CONSIDERED AS THE SUBJECT OF POETRY ; INSCRIBED 
TO MR. JOHN HOME. 



Home, thou return'st from Thames, whose Naiads 
long 

Have seen thee lingering with a fond delay, 

'Mid those soft friends, whose hearts, some fu- 
ture day, 
Shall melt, perhaps, to hear thy tragic song.* 
Go, not unmindful of that cordial youth | 5 

Whom, long endear'd, thou leavest by Levant's 
side; 
Together let us wish him lasting truth, 

And joy untainted with his destined bride. 
Go ! nor regardless, while these numbers boast 

My short-lived bliss, forget my social name ; 10 
But think, far off, how, on the southern coast, 

I met thy friendship with an equal flame ! 



* How truly did Collins predict Home's tragic powers ! 
t A gentleman of the name of Barrow, who introduced 
Home to Collins. Ed. 1788. 



ON POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS. 67 

Fresh to that soil thou turn'st, where every vale 
Shall prompt the poet, and his song demand : 

To thee thy copious subjects ne'er shall fail ; 15 
Thou need'st but take thy pencil to thy hand, 

And paint what all believe, who own thy genial 
land. 

n. 

There must thou wake perforce thy Doric quill ; 

'Tis Fancy's land to which thou sett'st thy feet ; 

Where still, 'tis said, the fairy people meet, 20 
Beneath each birken shade, on mead or hill ; 
There, each trim lass, that skims the milky store, 

To the swart tribes their creamy bowls allots ; 
By night they sip it round the cottage door, 

While airy minstrels warble jocund notes. 25 
There, every herd, by sad experience, knows 

How, wing'd with fate, their elf-shot arrows fly. 
When the sick ewe her summer food foregoes, 

Or, stretch'd on earth, the heart-smit heifers 
lie. 
Such airy beings awe the untutor'd swain : 30 

Nor thou, though learn'd, his homelier thoughts 
neglect ; 
Let thy sweet muse the rural faith sustain ; 

These are the themes of simple, sure effect, 
That add new conquests to her boundless reign, 

And fill, with double force, her heart-command- 
ing strain. 35 



68 ODES. 



III. 



E'en yet preserved, how often mayst thou hear, 
Where to the pole the Boreal mountains run, 
Taught by the father, to his listening son, . 
Strange lays, whose power had charm'd a Spen- 
ser's ear. 
At every pause, before thy mind possest, 40 

Old Runic bards shall seem to rise around, 
With uncouth lyres, in many-colour'd vest, 

Then* matted hair' with boughs fantastic crown'd: 
Whether thou bidst the well taught hind repeat 
The choral dirge, that mourns some chieftain 
brave, 45 

When every shrieking maid her bosom beat, 
And strew'd with choicest herbs his scented 
grave ! 
Or whether, sitting in the shepherd's shiel,* 

Thou hear'st some sounding tale of war's alarms ; 

When at the bugle's call, with fire and steel, 50 

The sturdy clans pour'd forth their brawny 

swarms, 

And hostile brothers met, to prove each other's 

arms. 

VARIATIONS. 

Ver. 44. Whether thou bidst the well taught hind relate 
51. The sturdy clans pour'd forth their bony swarms, 

* A summer hut, built in the high part of the mountains, 
to tend their flocks in the warm season, when the pasture is 
fine. Ed. 1788. 



ON POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS. 69 



IV. 

'Tis thine to sing, how, framing hideous spells, 

In Sky's lone isle, the gifted wizard seer, 

Lodged in the wintry cave with Fate's fell spear, 
Or in the depth of Uist's dark forest dwells : 56 

How they, whose sight such dreary dreams 
engross, 
With their own visions oft astonish'd droop, 

When, o'er the watery strath, or quaggy moss, 
They see the gliding ghosts unbodied troop. 60 

Or, if in sports, or on the festive green, 
Their destined glance some fated youth descry, 

Who now, perhaps, in lusty vigour seen, 
And rosy health, shall soon lamented die. 

For them the viewless forms of air obey ; 65 
Their bidding heed, and at their beck repair : 

They know what spirit brews the stormful day, 
And heartless, oft like moody madness, stare 
To see the phantom train their secret work prepare. 



To monarchs dear, some hundred miles astray, 70 
Oft have they seen Fate give the fatal blow ! 
The seer, in Sky, shriek'd as the blood did flow, 

When headless Charles warm on the scaffold lay ! 

VARIATIONS. 

Ver. 56. Or in the gloom of Uist's dark forest dwells: 
58. With their own visions oft afflicted droop, 
66 Theiivbidding mark, and at their beck repair: 



70 ODES. 

As Boreas threw his young Aurora * forth, 

In the first year of the first George's reign, 75 
And battles raged in welkin of the North, 

They mourn'd in air, fell, fell Rebellion slain ! 
And as, of late, they joy'd in Preston's fight, 

Saw, at sad Falkirk, ail their hopes near crown'd ! 
They raved ! divining, through their second sight, f 

Pale, red Culloden, where these hopes were 
drown'd ! 81 

Illustrious William! J Britain's guardian name! 

One William saved us from a tyrant's stroke ; 
He, for a sceptre, gain'd heroic fame, 

But thou, more glorious, Slavery's chain hast 

broke, 85 

To reign a private man, and bow to Freedom's yoke! 

VI. 

These, too, thou'lt sing! for well thy magic muse 
Can to the topmost heaven of grandeur soar ; 
Or stoop to wail the swain that is no more ! 

Ah, homely swains ! your homeward steps ne'er 
lose ; 90 



* By young Aurora, Collins undoubtedly meant the first 
appearance of the northern lights, which happened about the 
year 1715; at least it is most highly probable, from this 
peculiar circumstance, that no ancient writer whatever has 
taken any notice of them, nor even any modem one, previous 
to the above period. Ed. 1788. 

t Second sight is the term that is used for the divination 
of the Highlanders. Ed. 1788. 

§ The late Duke of Cumberland, who defeated the Pre- 
tender at the battle of Cullodem Ed. 1788i« 



ON POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS. 71 

Let not dank Will * mislead you to the heath ; 
Dancing in mirky night, o'er fen and lake, 

He glows, to draw you downward to your death, 
In his bewitch' d, low, marshy, willow brake ! 
What though far off, from some dark dell espied, 95 

His glimmering mazes cheer the excursive sight, 
Yet turn, ye wanderers, turn your steps aside, 

Nor trust the guidance of that faithless light ; 
For watchful, lurking, 'mid the unrustling reed, 

At those mirk hours the wily monster lies, 100 
And listens oft to hear the passing steed, 

And frequent round him rolls his sullen eyes, 
If chance his savage wrath may some weak wretch 
surprise. 

vn. 

Ah, luckless swain, o'er all unblest, indeed ! 

Whom late bewilder'd in the dank, dark fen, 105 

Far from his flocks, and smoking hamlet, then ! 
To that sad spot where hums the sedgy weed : 

On him, enraged, the fiend, in angry mood, 
Shall never look with pity's kind concern, 

But instant, furious, raise the whelming flood 110 
O'er its drown'd banks, forbidding all return ! 

VARIATION. 

Ver. 100. At those sad hours the wily monster lies ; 

111. O'er its drowned bank, forbidding all return! 

* A fiery meteor, called by various names, such as Will 
with the Wisp, Jack with the Lantern, etc. It hovers in the 
air over marshy and fenny places. Ed. 1788. 
10 



72 , ODES. 

Or, if he meditate his wish'd escape, 
To some dim hill, that seems uprising near, 

To his faint eye the grim and grisly shape, 
In all its terrors clad, shall wild appear. 115 

Meantime the watery surge shall round him rise, 
Pour'd sudden forth from every swelling source ! 

What now remains but tears and hopeless sighs ? 
His fear-shook limbs have lost their youthly force, 
And down the waves he floats, a pale and breath- 
less corse ! 120 

VIII. 

For him in vain his anxious wife shall wait, 

Or wander forth to meet him on his way ; 
For him in vain at to-fall of the day, 

His babes shall linger at the unclosing gate ! 
Ah, ne'er shall he return ! Alone, if night 125 

Her travel'd limbs in broken slumbers steep, 
With drooping willows drest, his mournful sprite 

Shall visit sad, perchance, her silent sleep : 
Then he, perhaps, with moist and watery hand, 129 

Shall fondly seem to press her shuddering cheek, 
And with his blue swoln face before her stand, 

And, shivering cold, these piteous accents speak : 

VARIATIONS. 

Ver. 124. His babes shall linger at the cottage gate ! 

127. With dropping willows drest, his mournful sprite 
130. Shall seem to press her cold and shuddering 
cheek, 






ON POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS. 73 

" Pursue, dear wife, thy daily toils pursue, 
At dawn or dusk, industrious as before ; 

Nor e'er of me one helpless thought renew, 135 
While I he weltering on the osier'd shore, 

Drown'd by the Kelpie's * wrath, nor e'er shall aid 
thee more ! " 

IX. 

Unbounded is thy range ; with varied skill 

Thy muse may, like those feathery tribes which 
spring 139 

From their rude rocks, extend her skirting wing 
Bound the moist marge of each cold Hebrid isle, 

To that hoar pile f which still its ruins shows : 
In whose small vaults a pigmy folk is found, 

Whose bones the delver with his spade upthrows, 
And culls them, wondering, from the hallow'd 
ground ! 145 

Or thither,J where, beneath the showery west, 

The mighty kings of three fair realms are laid ; 

VAEIATIONS. 

Ver. 133. Proceed, dear wife, thy daily toils pursue, 
135. Nor e'er of me one hapless thought renew, 
138. Unbounded is thy range; with varied stile 

* The water fiend. 

t One of the Hebrides is called the Isle of Pigmies; where 
it is reported, that several miniature bones of the human 
species have been dug up in the ruins of a chapel there. 

X Icolmkill, one of the Hebrides, where near sixty of the 
ancient Scottish, Irish, and Norwegian kings are interred. 



74 ODES. 

Once foes, perhaps, together now they rest, 
No slaves revere them, and no wars invade : 

Yet frequent now, at midnight's solemn hour, 150 
The rifted mounds their yawning cells unfold, 

And forth the monarchs stalk with sovereign power, 
In pageant robes, and wreath'd with sheeny 
gold, 

And on their twilight tombs aerial council hold. 

x. 

But, oh, o'er all, forget not Kilda's race, 155 

On whose bleak rocks, which brave the wasting 
tides, 

Fair Nature's daughter, Virtue, yet abides. 
Go ! just, as they, their blameless manners trace I 

Then to my ear transmit some gentle song, 
Of those whose lives are yet sincere and plain, 160 

Their bounded walks the rugged cliffs along, 
And all their prospect but the wintry main. 

With sparing temperance, at the needful time, 
They drain the scented spring ; or, hunger-prest, 

Along the Atlantic rock, undreading climb, 165 
And of its eggs despoil the solan's * nest. 

VARIATION. 

Ver. 164. They drain the sainted spring; or, hnnger-prest, 

* An aquatic bird like a goose, on the eggs of which the 
inhabitants of St. Kilda, another of the Hebrides, chiefly 
subsist. Ed. 1788. 



ON POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS. 75 

Thus, blest in primal innocence, they live 
Sufficed, and happy with that frugal fare 

Which tasteful toil and hourly danger give. 
Hard is their shallow soil, and bleak and bare ; 170 

Nor ever vernal bee was heard to murmur there ! 

XI. 

Nor need'st thou blush that such false themes 
engage 

Thy gentle mind, of fairer stores possest ; 

For not alone they touch the village breast, 
But fill'd, in elder time, the historic page. 175 

There, Shakespeare's self, with every garland 
crown'd, 
Flew to those fairy climes his fancy sheen, 

In musing hour ; his wayward sisters found, 
And with their terrors drest the magic scene. 179 

From them he sung, when, 'mid his bold design, 
Before the Scot, afflicted, and aghast ! 

The shadowy kings of Banquo's fated line 
Through the dark cave in gleamy pageant pass'd. 

Proceed ! nor quit the tales which, simply told, 
Could once so well my answering bosom pierce ; 

Proceed, in forceful sounds, and colours bold, 
The native legends of thy land rehearse ; 
To such adapt thy lyre, and suit thy powerful verse. 

XII. 

In scenes like these, which, daring to depart 
From sober truth, are still to nature true, 190 



76 ODES. 

And call forth fresh delight to Fancy's view, 
The heroic muse employ' d her Tasso's art i 

How have I trembled, when, at Tancred's stroke, 
Its gushing blood the gaping cypress pour'd ! 194 

When each live plant with mortal accents spoke, 
And the wild blast upheaved the vanish'd sword! 

How have I sat, when piped the pensive wind, 
To hear his harp by British Fairfax strung ! 

Prevailing poet ! whose undoubting mind 
Believed the magic wonders which he sung ! 200 

Hence, at each sound, imagination glows ! 
Hence, at each picture, vivid life starts here ! 

Hence his warm lay with softest sweetness flows ! 
Melting it flows, pure, murmuring, strong, and 

clear, 
And fills the impassion'd heart, and wins the 
harmonious ear ! 205 



VARIATIONS. 

Ver. 193. How have I trembled, when, at Tancred's side, 
Like him I stalk' d, and all his passions felt ; 
When charm' d by Ismen, through the forest wide, 
Bark'd in each plant a talking spirit dwelt ! 
201. Hence, sure to charm, his early numbers flow, 

Though strong, yet sweet 

Though faithful, sweet ; though strong, of simple 
kind. 
Hence, with each theme, he bids the bosom glow, 
While his warm lays an easy passage find, 
Pour'd through each inmost nerve, and lull the 
harmonious ear. 
204. Melting it flows, pure, numerous, strong, and clear, 



ON POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS. 77 



XIII. 

All hail, ye scenes that o'er my soul prevail ! 
Ye splendid friths and lakes, which, far away, 

Are by smooth Annan * fill'd or pastoral Tay,* 
Or Don's * romantic springs at distance hail ! 209 
The time shall come, when I, perhaps, may tread 

Your lowly glens, o'erhung with spreading 
broom ; 
Or, o'er your stretching heaths, by Fancy led ; 

Or, o'er your mountains creep, in awful gloom ! 
Then will I dress once more the faded bower, 214 

Where Jonson f satin Drummond's classic shade ; 
Or crop, from Tiviotdale, each lyric flower, 

And mourn, on Yarrow's banks, where Willy's 
laid ! 
Meantime, ye powers that on the plains which bore 

The cordial youth, on Lothian's plains,§ attend ! — 
Where'er Home dwells, on hill, or lowly moor, 220 

To him I lose, your kind protection lend, 
And, touch'd with love like mine, preserve my 
absent friend ! 

VARIATIONS. 

Ver. 216. Or crop from Tiviot's dale each — 

220. Where'er he dwell, on hill, or lowly muir, 

* Three rivers in Scotland. Ed." 1788. 

t Ben Jonson paid a visit on foot, in 1619, to the Scotch 
poet Drummond, at his seat of Hawthornden, within fonr 
miles of Edinburgh. 

$ Barrow, it seems, was at the . Edinburgh University, 
which is in the countv of Lothian. Ed. 1788. 



78 



AN EPISTLE, 

ADDRESSED TO SIR THOMAS HANMER, ON HIS EDITION OP 
SHAKESPEARE'S WORKS. 

Sir, 
While, born to bring the Muse's happier days 
A patriot's hand protects a poet's lays, 
While nursed by you she sees her myrtles bloom, 
Green and un wither' d o'er his honour'd tomb ; 
Excuse her doubts, if yet she fears to tell 5 

What secret transports in her bosom swell : 
With conscious awe she hears the critic's fame, 
And blushing hides her wreath at Shakespeare's 

name. 
Hard was the lot those injured strains endured, 
Unown'd by Science, and by years obscured : 10 

VARIATIONS. 

Ver. 1. While, own'd by you, with smiles the Muse surveys 
The expected triumph of her sweetest lays : 
While, stretch' d at ease, she boasts your guardian 

aid, 
Secure, and happy in her sylvan shade : 
Excuse her fears, who scarce a verse bestows, 
In just remembrance of the debt she owes ; 
With conscious, &c. 

9. Long slighted Fancy with a mother's care 
Wept o'er his works, and felt the last despair : 
Torn from her head, she saw the roses fall, 
By all deserted, though ?rlmired by all : 



EPISTLE TO SIR THOS. HANMER. 79 

Fair Fancy wept ; and echoing sighs confess'd 
A fix'd despair in every tuneful breast. 
Not with more grief the afflicted swains appear, 
When wintry winds deform the plenteous year ; 
When lingering frosts the ruin'd. seats invade 15 
Where Peace resorted, and the Graces play'd. 

Each rising art by just gradation moves, 
Toil builds on toil, and age on age improves : 
The Muse alone unequal dealt her rage, 19 

And graced with noblest pomp her earliest stage. 
Preserved through time, the speaking scenes impart 
Each changeful wish of Phaedra's tortured heart ; 

VARIATION. 

And " Oh ! " she cried, " shall Science still resign 
Whate'er is Nature's, and whate'er is mine ? 
Shall Taste and Art but show a cold regard, 
And scornful Pride reject the unletter'd bard ? 
Ye myrtled nymphs, who own my gentle reign, 
Tune the sweet lyre, and grace my airy train, 
If, where ye rove, your searching eyes have known 
One perfect mind, which judgment calls its own ; 
There every breast its fondest hopes must bend, 
And every Muse with tears await her friend.'* 
'Twas then fair Isis from her stream arose, 
In kind compassion of her sister's woes. 
'Twas then she promised to the mourning maid 
The immortal honours which thy hands have paid : 
" My best loved son," she said, " shall yet restore 
Thy ruin'd sweets, and Fancy weep no more." 
Each rising art by slow gradation moves ; 
Toil builds, &c. 



80 EPISTLE 

Or paint the curse that mark'd the Theban's* reign, 
A bed incestuous, and a father slain. 
With kind concern our pitying eyes o'ernow, 25 
Trace the sad tale, and own another's woe. 

To Rome removed, with wit secure to please, 
The comic Sisters kept their native ease : 
With jealous fear, declining Greece beheld 
Her own Menander's art almost excelTd ; 30 

But every Muse essay'd to raise in vain 
Some labour'd rival of her tragic strain : 
Ilissus' laurels, though transferr'd with toil, 
Droop'd their fair leaves, nor knew the nnfriendly 
soil. 

As Arts expired, resistless Dulness rose ; 35 
Goths, Priests, or Vandals, — all were Learning's 
foes. 



VARIATIONS. 

Ver. 25. Line after line our pitying eyes o'ernow, 

27. To Rome removed, with equal power to please, 
35. When Rome herself, her envied glories dead, 
No more imperial, stoop' d her conquer' d head ; 
Luxuriant Florence chose a softer theme, 
While all was peace, by Amo's silver stream. 
With sweeter notes the Etrurian vales complain' d, 
And arts reviving told a Cosmo reign 'd. 
Their wanton lyres the bards of Provence strung, 
Sweet flow'd the lays, but love was all they sung. 
The gay, &c. 

* The (Edipus of Sophocles. 



TO SIR THOMAS HANMER. 81 

Till Julius* first recalTd each exiled maid, 
And Cosmo own'd them in the Etrurian shade : 
Then, deeply skill'd in love's engaging theme, 
The soft Provencal pass'd to Arno's stream : 40 
With graceful ease the wanton lyre he strung ; 
Sweet flow'd the lays — but love was all he sung. 
The gay description could not fail to move, 
For, led by nature, all are friends to love. 

But Heaven, still various in its works, decreed 45 
The perfect boast of time should last succeed. 
The beauteous union must appear at length, 
Of Tuscan fancy, and Athenian strength: 
One greater Muse Eliza's reign adorn, 
And e'en a Shakespeare to her fame be born ! 50 

Yet ah ! so bright her morning's opening ray, 
In vain our Britain hoped an equal day ! 
No second growth the western isle could bear, 
At once exhausted with too rich a year. 
Too nicely Jonson knew the critic's part ; 55 

Nature in him was almost lost in art. 
Of softer mould the gentle Fletcher came, 
The next in order, as the next in name ; 
With pleased attention, 'midst his scenes we find 
Each glowing thought that warms the female mind; 
4 

VARIATION. 

Ver. 45. But Heaven, still rising in its works, decreed 

* Julius the Second, the immediate predecessor of Leo the 
Tenth. 



82 EPISTLE 

Each melting sigh, and every tender tear ; 61 

The lover's wishes, and the virgin's fear. 
His ever j strain * the Smiles and Graces own ; 
But stronger Shakespeare felt for man alone : 
Drawn by his pen, our ruder passions stand 65 
The unrival'd picture of his early hand. 

With f gradual steps and slow, exact er France 
Saw Art's fair empire o'er her shores advance : 
By length of toil a bright perfection knew, 
Correctly bold, and just in all she drew : 70 

Till late Corneille, with Lucan's I spirit fired, 
Breathed the free strain, as Rome and he inspired : 
And classic judgment gain'd to sweet Racine 
The temperate strength of Maro's chaster line. 

But wilder far the British laurel spread, 75 
And wreaths less artful crown our poet's head. 

VARIATIONS. 

Ver. 63. His every strain the Loves and Graces own; 
71. Till late Corneille from epick Lucan brought 
The full expression, and the Roman thought : 

* Their characters are thus distinguished by Mr. Dryden. 

t About the time of Shakespeare, the poet Hardy was in 
great repute in France. He wrote, according to Fontenelle, 
six hundred plays. The French poets after him applied 
themselves in general to the correct improvement of the stage, 
which was almost totally disregarded by those of our own 
country, Jonson excepted. 

X The favourite author of the elder Corneille. 



TO SIR THOMAS HANMER. 83 

Yet he alone to every scene could give 

The historian's truth, and bid the manners live. 

Waked at his call I view, with glad surprise, 

Majestic forms of mighty monarchs rise. 80 

There Henry's trumpets spread their loud alarms, 

And laurel'd Conquest waits her hero's arms. 

Here gentler Edward claims a pitying sigh, 

Scarce born to honours, and so soon to die ! 

Yet shall thy throne, unhappy infant, bring 85 

No beam of comfort to the guilty king : 

The time* shall come when Glo'ster's heart shall 

bleed, 
In life's last hours, with horror of the deed ; 
When dreary visions shall at last present 
Thy vengeful image in the midnight tent : 90 

Thy hand unseen the secret death shall bear, 
Blunt the weak sword, and break the oppressive 

spear ! 

Where'er we turn, by Fancy charm'd, we find 
Some sweet illusion of the cheated mind. 
Oft, wild of wing, she calls the soul to rove 95 
With humbler nature, in the rural grove ; 
Where swains contented own the quiet scene, 
And twilight fairies tread the circled green : 
Dress'd by her hand, the woods and valleys smile, 
And Spring diffusive decks the enchanted isle. 100 



* Turno terapus erit, magno cum optaverit emptum 
Intactum Pallanta, etc. ViRG. 



84 EPISTLE 

0, more than all in powerful genius blest, 
Come, take thine empire o'er the willing breast ! 
Whate'er the wounds this youthful heart shall feel, 
Thy songs support me, and thy morals heal ! 
There every thought the poet's warmth may raise, 
There native music dwells in all the lays. 106 

might some verse with happiest skill persuade 
Expressive Picture to adopt thine aid ! 
What wondrous draughts might rise from every 

page! 
What other Kaphaels charm a distant age ! 110 

Methinks e'en now I view some free design, 
Where breathing Nature lives in every line : 



VARIATIONS. 

Ver. 101. 0, blest in all that genius gives to charm, 

Whose morals mend us, and whose passions warm ! 
Oft let my youth attend thy various page, 
Where rich invention rales the unbounded stage : 
There every scene the poet's warmth may raise, 
And melting music find the softest lays : 
0, might the Muse with equal ease persuade 
Expressive Picture to adopt thine aid ! 
Some powerful Raphael should again appear, 
And arts consenting fix then empire here. 

111. Methinks e'en now I view some fair design, " 
Where breathing Nature lives in every line ; 
Chaste and subdued, the modest colours lie, 
In fair proportion to the approving eye : 
And see where Anthony lamenting stands, 
In fixt distress, and spreads his pleading hands : 
O'er the pale corse the warrior seems to bend, 



TO SIR THOMAS HANMER. 85 

Chaste and subdued the modest lights decay, 
Steal into shades, and mildly melt away. 
And see where Anthony,* in tears approved, 115 
Guards the pale relics of the chief he loved : 
O'er the cold corse the warrior seems to bend, 
Deep sunk in grief, and mourns his murder'd friend ! 
Still as they press, he calls on all around, 
Lifts the torn robe, and points the bleeding wound. 

But who | is he, whose brows exalted bear 121 
A wrath impatient, and a fiercer air ? 
Awake to all that injured worth can feel, 
On his own Rome he turns the avenging steel ; 
Yet shall not war's insatiate fury fall 125 

(So heaven ordains it) on the destined wall. 
See the fond mother, 'midst the plaintive train, 
Hung on his knees, and prostrate on the plain ! 

VARIATION. 

Ver. 122. A rage impatient, and a fiercer air ? 

E'en now his thoughts with eager vengeance doom 
The last sad ruin of ungrateful Rome. 
Till, slow advancing o'er the tented plain, 
In sable weeds, appear the kindred train : 
The frantic mother leads their wild despair, 
Beats her swoln breast, and rends her silver hair; 
And see, he yields ! the tears unbidden start, 
And conscious nature claims the unwilling heart ! 
O'er all the man conflicting passions rise ; 

* See the tragedy of Julius Cassar. 

t Coriolanus. See Mr. Spence's Dialogue on the Odyssey. 



86 EPISTLE. 

Touch'd to the soul, in vain he strives to hide 
The son's affection, in the Roman's pride : 130 

O'er all the man conflicting passions rise ; 
Rage grasps the sword, while Pity melts the eyes. 

Thus generous Critic, as thy Bard inspires, 
The sister Arts shall nurse their drooping fires : 
Each from his scenes her stores alternate bring, 135 
Blend the fair tints, or wake the vocal string : 
Those sibyl leaves, the sport of every wind, 
(For poets ever were a careless kind,) 
By thee disposed, no farther toil demand, 
But, just to Nature, own thy forming hand. 140 

So spread o'er Greece, the harmonious whole 
unknown, 
E'en Homer's numbers charm'd by parts alone. 
Their own Ulysses scarce had wander'd more, 
By winds and waters cast on every shore : 
When, raised by fate, some former Hanmer join'd 
Each beauteous image of the boundless mind ; 146 
And bade, like thee, his Athens ever claim 
A fond alliance with the Poet's name. 

Oxford, Dec. 3, 
1743. 



VARIATIONS. 



Ver. 136. Spread the fair tints, or wake the vocal string: 
146. Each beauteous image of the tuneful mind; 



87 



DIRGE m CYMBELINE, 

SUNG BY GUIDERUS AND ARVIRAGUS OVER FIDELE, 
SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD. 



To fair Fidele's grassy tomb 

Soft maids and village hinds shall bring 
Each opening sweet of earliest bloom, 

And rifle all the breathing spring. 

No wailing ghost shall dare appear 5 

To vex with shrieks this quiet grove ; 

But shepherd lads assemble here, 
And melting virgins own their love. 

No wither'd witch shall here be seen ; 

No goblins lead their nightly crew : 10 

The female fays shall haunt the green, 

And dress thy grave with pearly dew ! 

VARIATIONS. 

Ver. 1. To fair Pastora's grassy tomb 

« 7. But shepherd swains assemble here, 

11. But female fays shall haunt the green, 

12. And dress thy bed with pearly dew ! 

11 



88 DIRGE IN OTMBELINE. 

The redbreast oft, at evening hours. 

Shall kindly lend his little aid, 
With hoary moss, and gather'd flowers, 15 

To deck the ground where thou art laid. 

When howling winds, and beating rain, 
In tempests shake the sylvan cell ; 

Or 'midst the chase, on every plain, 

The tender thought on thee shall dwell ; 30 

Each lonely scene shall thee restore ; 

For thee the tear be duly shed ; 
Beloved till life can charm no more, 

And mourn'd till Pity's self be dead* 

VARIATIONS. 

Ver. 17. When chiding winds, and beating rain, 
In tempest shake the sylvan cell ; 
Or 'midst the flocks, on every plain, 

21. Each lovely scene shall thee restore ; 
23. Beloved till life could charm no more, 



89 



VERSES 

WRITTEN ON A PAPER WHICH CONTAINED A PIECE OF 
BRIDE-CAKE, GIVEN TO THE AUTHOR BY A LADY. 



Ye curious hands, that, hid from vulgar eyes, 
By search profane shall find this hallow'd cake, 

With virtue's awe forbear the sacred prize, 
Nor dare a theft, for love and pity's sake ! 

This precious relic, form'd by magic power, 5 

Beneath her shepherd's haunted pillow laid, 

"Was meant by love to charm the silent hour, 
The secret present of a matchless maid. 

The Cyprian queen, at Hymen's fond request, 9 
Each nice ingredient chose with happiest art; 

Fears, sighs, and wishes of the enamour'd breast, 
And pains that please, are mix'd in every part. 

With rosy hand the spicy fruit she brought, 
From Paphian hills, and fair Cythera's isle ; 14 

And temper 'd sweet with these the melting thought, 
The kiss ambrosial, and the yielding smile. 



90 VERSES. 

Ambiguous looks, that scorn and yet relent, 
Denials mild, and firm unalter'd truth ; 

Reluctant pride, and amorous faint consent, 

And meeting ardours, and exulting youth. 20 

Sleep, wayward God ! hath sworn, while these re- 
main, 

With flattering dreams to dry his nightly tear, 
And cheerful Hope, so oft invoked in vain, 

With fairy songs shall soothe his pensive ear. 

If, bound by vows to Friendship's gentle side, 25 
And fond of soul, thou hop'st an equal grace, 

If youth or maid thy joys and griefs divide, 
O, much entreated, leave this fatal place ! 

Sweet Peace, who long hath shunn'd my plain- 
tive day, 29 

Consents at length to bring me short delight, 
Thy careless steps may scare her doves away, 

And Grief with raven note usurp the night. 



91 



TO MISS AUEELIA C E, 

ON HER WEEPING AT HER SISTER'S WEDDING. 

Cease, fair Aurelia, cease to mourn, 
Lament not Hannah's happy state ; 

You may be happy in your turn, 
And seize the treasure you regret. 

With Love united Hymen stands, 
And softly whispers to your charms, 

" Meet but your lover in my bands, 
You'll find your sister in his arms." 



SONNET. 

When Phoebe form'd a wanton smile, 

My soul ! it reach'd not here : 
Strange, that thy peace, thou trembler r flies 

Before a rising tear ! 
From 'midst the drops, my love is born, 5 

That o'er those eyelids rove : 
Thus issued from a teeming wave 

The fabled queen of love. 



92 



SONG. 

THE SENTIMENTS BORROWED FROM SHAKESPEARE.* 

Young Damon of the vale is dead, 

Ye lowly hamlets, moan ; 
A dewy turf lies o'er his head, 

And at his feet a stone. 

His shroud, which Death's cold damps destroy, 5 

Of snow-white threads was made : 
All mourn'd to see so sweet a boy 

In earth for ever laid. 

Pale pansies o'er his corpse were placed, 

Which, pluck'd before their time, 10 

Bestrew'd the boy, like him to waste 
And wither in their prime. 

VARIATION. 

Ver. 2. Ye lowland hamlets, moan ; 

* It is uncertain where this poem appeared. It was in- 
serted in the Edinburgh edition of the Poets, 1794. A 
manuscript copy in the collection recently belonging to Mr. 
Upcott, and now in the British Museum, is headed, " Written 
by Collins when at Winchester School. From a Manu- 
script." 



SONG. 93 

But will he ne'er return, whose tongue 

Could tune the rural lay ? 
Ah, no ! his bell of peace is rung, 15 

His lips are cold as clay. 

They bore him out at twilight hour, 

The youth who loved so well : 
Ah, me ! how many a true love shower 

Of kind remembrance fell ! 20 

Each maid was woe — but Lucy chief, 

Her grief o'er all was tried ; 
Within his grave she dropp'd in grief, 

And o'er her loved one died. 



94 



ON OUR LATE TASTE IN MUSIC* 



Quid vocis modulamen inane juvabat 

Verborum sensusque vacans numerique loquaeis ? 

Milton. 



Britons ! away with the degenerate pack ! 
Waft, western winds ! the foreign spoilers back ! 
Enough has been in wild amusements spent, 
Let British verse and harmony content ! 
No music once could charm you like your own, 5 
Then tuneful Robinson, f and Tofts were known ; 
Then Purcell touch'd the strings, while numbers 

hung 
Attentive to the sounds — and blest the song ! 
E'en gentle Weldon taught us manly notes, 9 

Beyond the enervate thrills of Roman throats ! 
Notes, foreign luxury could ne'er inspire, 
That animate the soul, and swell the lyre ! 
That mend, and not emasculate our hearts, 
And teach the love of freedom and of arts. 14 



* See Memoir, p. xxxviii. 

t Now Countess-dowager of Peterborough. 



ON OUR LATE TASTE IN MUSIC. 95 

Nor yet, while guardian Phoebus gilds our isle, 
Does heaven averse await the muses' toil ; 
Cherish but once our worth of native race, 
The sister-arts shall soon display their face ! 
Even half discouraged through the gloom they 

strive, 
Smile at neglect, and o'er oblivion live. 20 

See Handel, careless of a foreign fame, 
Fix on our shore, and boast a Briton's name : 
While, placed marmoric in the vocal grove,* 
He guides the measures listening throngs approve. 
Mark silence at the voice of Arne confess'd, 25 
Soft as the sweet enchantress rules the breast ; 
As when transported Venice lent an ear, 
Camilla's charms to view, and accents hear ! f 
So while she varies the impassion'd song, 
Alternate motions on the bosom throng ! 30 

As heavenly Milton X guides her magic voice, 
And virtue thus convey'd allures the choice. 

Discard soft nonsense in a slavish tongue, 
The strain insipid, and the thought unknown ; 
From truth and nature form the unerring test ; 35 
Be what is manly, chaste, and good the best! 
'Tis not to ape the songsters of the groves, 
Through all the quiverings of their wanton loves ; 
'Tis not the enfeebled thrill, or warbled shake, 
The heart can strengthen, or the soul awake ! 40 

* Vauxhall. 

t Vide the Spectator's Letters from Camilla, vol. vi. 

X Milton's Comus lately revived. 



96 ON OUR LATE TASTE IN MUSIC. 

But where the force of energy is found 
When the sense rises on the wings of sound ; 
When reason, with the charms of music twined, 
Through the enraptured ear informs the mind ; 
Bids generous love or soft compassion glow, 45 
And forms a tuneful Paradise below ! 

Oh Britons ! if the honour still you boast. 
No longer purchase follies at such cost ! 
No longer let unmeaning sounds invite 
To visionary scenes of false delight : 60 

When, shame to sense ! we see the hero's rage 
Lisp'd on the tongue, and danced along the stage ! 
Or hear in eunuch sounds a hero squeak, 
While kingdoms rise or fall upon a shake ! 
Let them at home to slavery's painted train, 55 
With siren art, repeat the pleasing strain : 
While we, like wise Ulysses, close our ear 
To songs which liberty forbids to hear ! 
Keep, guardian gales, the infectious guests away, 
To charm where priests direct, and slaves obey. 
Madrid, or wanton Rome, be their delight ; 
There they may warble as their poets write. 
The temper of our isle, though cold, is clear ; 
And such our genius, noble though severe. 64 

Our Shakespeare scorn'd the trifling rules of art, 
But knew to conquer and surprise the heart ! 
In magic chains the captive thought to bind, 
And fathom all the depths of human kind ! 

Too long, our shame, the prostituted herd 
Our sense have bubbled, and our wealth have 
shared. 



ON OUR LATE TASTE IN MUSIC. 97 

Too long the favourites of our vulgar great 71 
Have bask'd in luxury, and lived in state ! 
In Tuscan wilds now let them villas rear * 
Ennobled by the charity we spare. 
There let them warble in the tainted breeze, 75 
Or sing like widow'd orphans to the trees : 
There let them chant their incoherent dreams, 
Where howls Charybdis, and where Scylla screams ! 
Or where Avernus, from his darksome round, 
May echo to the winds the blasted sound ! 80 

As fair Alcyone,f with anguish press'd, 
Broods o'er the British main with tuneful breast, 
Beneath the white-brow'd cliff protected sings, 
Or skims the azure plain with painted wings ! 
Grateful, like her, to nature, and as just, 85 

In our domestic blessings let us trust ; 
Keep for our sons fair learning's bonour'd prize, 
Till the world own the worth they now despise ! 



* Senesino has built a palace near Sienna on an estate 
which carries the title of a Marquisate, but purchased with 
English gold. 

f The king-fisher. 



OBSERVATIONS ON THE ORIENTAL 
ECLOGUES AND ODES. 

BY DB. LANGHOENE. 



OBSERVATIONS ON THE ORIENTAL 
ECLOGUES. 



The genius of the pastoral, as well as of every 
other respectable species of poetry, had its origin 
in the east, and from thence was transplanted by 
the muses of Greece ; but whether from the con- 
tinent of the Lesser Asia, or from Egypt, which, 
about the era of the Grecian pastoral, was the 
hospitable nurse of letters, it is not easy to deter- 
mine. From the subjects, and the manner of 
Theocritus, one would incline to the latter opin- 
ion, while the history of Bion is in favour of the 
former. 

However, though it should still remain a doubt 
through what channel the pastoral traveled west- 
ward, there is not the least shadow of uncertainty 
concerning its oriental origin. 

In those ages which, guided by sacred chro- 
nology, from a comparative view of time, we call 
the early ages, it appears, from the most authentic 
historians, that the chiefs of the people employed 



102 OBSERVATIONS ON THE 

themselves in rural exercises, and that astrono- 
mers and legislators were at the same time shep- 
herds. Thus Strabo informs us, that the history 
of the creation was communicated to the Egyp- 
tians by a Chaldean shepherd. 

From these circumstances it is evident, not only 
that such shepherds were capable of all the dig- 
nity and elegance peculiar to poetry, but that 
whatever poetry they attempted would be of the 
pastoral kind; would take its subjects from those 
scenes of rural simplicity in which they were con- 
versant, and, as it was the offspring of harmony 
and nature, would employ the powers it derived 
from the former, to celebrate the beauty and be- 
nevolence of the latter. 

Accordingly we find that the most ancient 
poems treat of agriculture, astronomy, and other 
objects within the rural and natural systems. 

What constitutes the difference between the 
georgic and the pastoral, is love and the collo- 
quial or dramatic form of composition peculiar to 
the latter ; this form of composition is sometimes 
dispensed with, and love and rural imagery alone 
are thought sufficient to distinguish the pastoral. 
The tender passion, however, seems to be essen- 
tial to this species of poetry, and is hardly ever 
excluded from those pieces that were intended to 
come under this denomination : even in those 
eclogues of the Amoebean kind, whose only pur 
port is a trial of skill between contending shep- 



ORIENTAL ECLOGUES. 103 

herds, love has its usual share, and the praises of 
their respective mistresses are the general subjects 
of the competitors. 

It is to be lamented, that scarce any oriental 
compositions of this kind have survived the ra- 
vages of ignorance, tyranny, and time ; we cannot 
doubt that many such have been extant, possibly 
as far down as that fatal period, never to be men- 
tioned in the world of letters without horror, 
when the glorious monuments of human inge- 
nuity perished in the ashes of the Alexandrian 
library. 

Those ingenious Greeks, whom we call the 
parents of pastoral poetry, were, probably, no 
more than imitators, of imitators that derived 
their harmony from higher and remoter sources, 
and kindled their poetical fires at those then un- 
extinguished lamps which burned within the tombs 
of oriental genius. 

It is evident that Homer has availed himself of 
those magnificent images and descriptions so fre- 
quently to be met with in the books of the Old 
Testament ; and why may not Theocritus, Mos- 
chus, and Bion have found their archetypes in 
other eastern writers, whose names have perished 
with their works? yet, though it may not be 
illiberal to admit such a supposition, it would 
certainly be invidious to conclude, what the ma- 
lignity of cavillers alone could suggest with regard 
to Homer, that they destroyed the sources from 

12 



104 OBSERVATIONS ON THE 

which they borrowed, and, as it is fabled of the 
young of the pelican, drained their supporters to 
death. 

As the Septuagint translation of the Old Tes- 
tament was performed at the request, and under 
the patronage, of Ptolemy Philadelphus, it were 
not to be wondered if Theocritus, who was enter- 
tained at that prince's court, had borrowed some 
part of his pastoral imagery from the poetical 
passages of those books. I think it can hardly 
be doubted that the Sicilian poet had in his eye 
certain expressions of the prophet Isaiah, when 
he wrote the following lines : 

"Svv la fiev (f>opeoiT€ /3drot, (fiopeoire 6° aKavOai, 
e A $e KaKa NdpKi(rcros eV dpKev6oi(TL Kop.d<rai • 
TLdvra 8 evaWa ytvoiro, kol a ttltvs oxvas eveincu 
■ ical robs kvvcls <b\a(j)os cXkoi. 

Let vexing brambles the bine violet bear, 

On the rnde thorn Narcissus dress his hair, 

All, all reversed — The pine with pears be crown' d, 

And the bold deer shall drag the trembling hound. 

The cause, indeed, of these phenomena is very 
different in the Greek from what it is in the He- 
brew poet ; the former employing them on the 
death, the latter on the birth, of an important 
person : but the marks of imitation are neverthe- 
less obvious. 

It might, however, be expected, that if Theo- 
critus had borrowed at all from the sacred writers, 
the celebrated pastoral epithalamium of Solomon, 



ORIENTAL ECLOGUES. 105 

so much within his own walk of poetry, would 
not certainly have escaped his notice. His epi- 
thalamium on the marriage of Helena, moreover, 
gave him an open field for imitation ; therefore, 
if he has any obligations to the royal bard, we 
may expect to find them there. The very open- 
ing of the poem is in the spirit of the Hebrew 



Ovtco brj 7rpon£a Karedpades, a) <£t\e yafifipe ; 

The colour of imitation is still stronger in the fol- 
lowing passage : 

Acta avriKKoicra kclKov butyaive 7rp6(ra>7rov, 
TLoTVia vvf; are, Xcvkou eap ^ei/zwi/os dvevros " 

Qde kcu a xpv(rea e E\ez>a 8i€(paiv€T iv dfiiv, 
TLuipq fxeyaXa ar avebpafxe Koafios dpovpa. 

H Kancd KV7rdpL(T(Tos, rj apfiari QeaaaXos ITTTTOS. 

This description of Helen is infinitely above the 
style and figure of the Sicilian pastoral : " She is 
like the rising of the golden morning, when the 
night departeth, and when the winter is over and 
gone. She resembleth the cypress in the garden, 
the horse in the chariots of Thessaly." These 
figures plainly declare their origin; and others, 
equally imitative, might be pointed out in the 
same idyllium. 

This beautiful and luxuriant marriage pastoral 
of Solomon is the only perfect form of the orien- 
tal eclogue that has survived the ruins of time ; a 
happiness for which it is, probably, more indebted 



106 OBSERVATIONS ON THE 

to its sacred character than to its intrinsic merit. 
Not that it is by any means destitute of poetical 
excellence : like all the eastern poetry, it is bold, 
wild, and unconnected in its figures, allusions, 
and parts, and has all that graceful and magnifi- 
cent daring which characterizes its metaphorical 
and comparative imagery. 

In consequence of these peculiarities, so ill 
adapted to the frigid genius of the north, Mr. 
Collins could make but little use of it as a prece- 
dent for his Oriental Eclogues ; and even in his 
third eclogue, where the subject is of a similar 
nature, he has chosen rather to follow the mode 
of the Doric and the Latian pastoral. 

The scenery and subjects then of the foregoing 
eclogues alone are oriental ; the style and colour- 
ing are purely European ; and, for this reason, 
the author's preface, in which he intimates that 
he had the originals from a merchant who traded 
to the east, is omitted, as being now altogether 
superfluous.* 

With regard to the merit of these eclogues, it 
may justly be asserted, that in simplicity of de- 
scription and expression, in delicacy and softness 
of numbers, and in natural and unaffected ten- 
derness, they are not to be equaled by any thing 
of the pastoral kind in the English language. 

* In the present edition the preface is restored. 



ORIENTAL ECLOGUES. 107 



ECLOGUE I. 



This eclogue, which is entitled Selim, or the 
Shepherd's Moral, as there is nothing dramatic in 
the subject, may be thought the least entertain- 
ing of the four : but it is by no means the least 
valuable. The moral precepts which the intelli- 
gent shepherd delivers to his fellow-swains, and 
the virgins their companions, are such as would 
infallibly promote the happiness of the pastoral 
life. 

In impersonating the private virtues, the poet 
has observed great propriety, and has formed 
their genealogy with the most perfect judgment, 
when he represents them as the daughters of 
truth and wisdom. 

The characteristics of modesty and chastity are 
extremely happy and peinturesque : 

" Come thon, whose thoughts as limpid springs are clear, 

To lead the train, sweet Modesty, appear ; 

With thee be Chastity, of all afraid, 

Distrusting all, a wise, suspicious maid ; 

Cold is -her breast, like flowers that drink the dew ; 

A silken veil conceals her from the view." 



108 OBSERVATIONS ON THE 

The two similes borrowed from rural objects are 
not only much in character, but perfectly natural 
and expressive. There is, notwithstanding, this 
defect in the former, that it wants a peculiar pro- 
priety ; for purity of thought may as well be 
applied to chastity as to modesty ; and from this 
instance, as well as from a thousand more, we 
may see the necessity of distinguishing, in cha- 
racteristic poetry, every object by marks and 
attributes peculiarly its own. 

It cannot be objected to this eclogue, that it 
wants both those essential criteria of the pastoral, 
love and the drama ; for though it partakes not 
of the latter, the former still retains an interest in 
it, and that too very material, as it professedly 
consults the virtue and happiness of the lover, 
while it informs what are the qualities 

that must lead to love. 



ORIENTAL ECLOGUES. 109 



ECLOGUE H. 



All the advantages that any species of poetry- 
can derive from the novelty of the subject and 
scenery, this eclogue possesses. The route of a 
camel-driver is a scene that scarce could exist in 
the imagination of a European, and of its at- 
tendant distresses he could have no idea. — These 
are very happily and minutely painted by our de- 
scriptive poet. What sublime simplicity of ex- 
pression ! what nervous plainness in the opening 
of the poem ! 

"In silent horror o'er the boundless waste 
The driver Hassan with his camels past." 

The magic pencil of the poet brings the whole 
scene before us at once, as it were by enchant- 
ment ; and in this single couplet we feel all the 
effect that arises from the terrible wildness of a 
region unenlivened by the habitations of men. 
The verses that describe so minutely the camel- 
driver's little provisions have a touching influence 
on the imagination, and prepare the reader to 



110 OBSERVATIONS ON THE 

enter more feelingly into his future apprehensions 
of distress : 

" Bethink thee, Hassan, where shall thirst assuage, 
When fails this cruise, his unrelenting rage ! " 

It is difficult to say whether his apostrophe to the 
" mute companions of his toils " is more to be ad- 
mired for the elegance and beauty of the poetical 
imagery, or for the tenderness and humanity of 
the sentiment. He who can read it without being 
affected, will do his heart no injustice if he con- 
cludes it to be destitute of sensibility : 

" Ye mute companions of my toils, that bear 
In all my griefs a more than equal share ! 
Here, where no springs in murmurs break away, 
Or moss-crown' d fountains mitigate the day, 
In vain ye hope the green delights to know, 
Which plains more blest, or verdant vales, bestow : 
Here rocks alone and tasteless sands are found, 
And faint and sickly winds for ever howl around.' \ 

Yet in these beautiful lines there is a slight error, 
which writers *of the greatest genius very fre- 
quently fall into. — It will be needless to observe 
to the accurate reader, that in the fifth and sixth 
verses there is a verbal pleonasm where the poet 
speaks of the green delights of verdant vales. 
There is an oversight of the same kind in the 
Manners, an Ode, where the poet says, 

" Seine's blue nymphs deplore 

In watchet weeds ." 



ORIENTAL ECLOGUES. Ill 

This fault is indeed a common one, but to a 
reader of taste it is nevertheless disgustful ; and 
it is mentioned here, as the error of a man of 
genius and judgment, that men of genius and 
judgment may guard against it. 

Mr. Collins speaks like a true poet, as well in 
sentiment as expression, when, with regard to the 
thirst of wealth, he says, 

" Why heed we not, while mad we haste along, 
The gentle voice of Peace, or Pleasure's song? 
Or wherefore think the flowery mountain's side, 
The fountain's murmurs, and the valley's pride, 
Why think we these less pleasing to behold, 
Than dreary deserts, if they lead to gold? " 

But however just these sentiments may appear 
to those who have not revolted from nature and 
simplicity, had the author proclaimed them in 
Lombard Street, or Cheapside, he would not have 
been complimented with the understanding of the 
bellman. — A striking proof, that our own parti- 
cular ideas of happiness regulate our opinions 
concerning the sense and wisdom of others ! 

It is impossible to take leave of this most beau- 
tiful eclogue, without paying the tribute of admi- 
ration so justly due to the following nervous 
lines : 

" What if the lion in his rage I meet ! 

Oft in the dust I view his printed feet : 
And, fearful ! oft, when day's declining light 
Yields her pale empire to the mourner night, 



112 OBSERVATIONS ON THE 

By hunger roused, he scours the groaning plain, 
Gaunt wolves and sullen tigers in his train : 
Before them death with shrieks directs their way, 
Fills the wild yell, and leads them to their prey." 

This, amongst many other passages to be met 
with in the writings of Collins, shows that his 
genius was perfectly capable of the grand and 
magnificent in description, notwithstanding what 
a learned writer has advanced to the contrary. 
Nothing, certainly, could be more greatly con- 
ceived, or more adequately expressed, than the 
image in the last couplet. 

The deception, sometimes used in rhetoric and 
poetry, which presents us with an object or senti- 
ment contrary to what we expected, is here intro- 
duced to the greatest advantage : 

" Farewell the youth, whom sighs could not detain, 
Whom Zara's breaking heart implored in vain I 

Yet, as thou go'st, may every blast arise 

Weak and unfelt as these rejected sighs I " 

But this, perhaps, is rather an artificial prettiness, 
than a real or natural beauty. 



ORIENTAL ECLOGUES. 113 



ECLOGUE IH. 



That innocence, and native simplicity of man- 
ners, which, in the first eclogue, was allowed to 
constitute the happiness of love, is here beautiful- 
ly described in its effects. The sultan of Persia 
marries a Georgian shepherdess, and finds in her 
embraces that genuine felicity which unperverted 
nature alone can bestow. The most natural and 
beautiful parts of this eclogue are those where 
the fair sultana refers with so much pleasure to 
her pastoral amusements, and those scenes of 
happy innocence in which she had passed her 
early years ; particularly when, upon her first 
departure, 

" Oft as she went, she backward turned her view, 
And bade that crook and bleating flock adieu." 

This picture of amiable simplicity reminds one of 
that passage where Proserpine, when carried off 
by Pluto, regrets the loss of the flowers she has 
been gathering : 

" Collecti flores tunicis cecidere remissis : 
Tantaque simplicitas puerilibus adfuit annis, 
Haec quoque virgineum movit jactura dolorem." 



114 OBSERVATIONS ON THE 



ECLOGUE IV. 



The beautiful but unfortunate country where the 
scene of this pathetic eclogue is laid, had been 
recently torn in pieces by the depredations of its 
savage neighbours, when Mr. Collins so affect- 
ingly described its misfortunes. This ingenious 
man had not only a pencil to portray, but a heart 
to feel for the miseries of mankind ; and it is 
with the utmost tenderness and humanity he 
enters into the narrative of Circassia's ruin, while 
he realizes the scene, and brings the present 
drama before us. Of every circumstance that 
could possibly contribute to the tender effect this 
pastoral was designed to produce, the poet has 
availed himself with the utmost art and address. 
Thus he prepares the heart to pity the distresses 
of Circassia, by representing it as the scene of 
the happiest love : 

" In fair Circassia, where, to love inclined, 
Each swain was blest, for every maid was kind," 

To give the circumstance of the dialogue a more 
affecting solemnity, he makes the time midnight, 



ORIENTAL ECLOGUES. 115 

and describes the two shepherds in the very act 
of flight from the destruction that swept over 
their country : 

" Sad o'er the dews, two brother shepherds fled, 
Where wildering fear and desperate sorrow led." 

There is a beauty and propriety in the epithet 
wildering, which strikes us more forcibly, the 
more we consider it. 

The opening of the dialogue is equally happy, 
natural, and unaffected ; when one of the shep- 
herds, weary and overcome with the fatigue of 
flight, calls upon his companion to review the 
length of way they had passed. This is certainly 
painting from nature, and the thoughts, however 
obvious, or 'destitute of refinement, are perfectly 
in character. But as the closest pursuit of nature 
is the surest way to excellence in general, and to 
sublimity in particular, in poetical description, so 
we find that this simple suggestion of the shep- 
herd is not unattended with magnificence. There 
is a grandeur and variety in the landscape he 
describes : 

" And first review that long extended plain, 
And yon wide groves, already past with pain ! 
Yon ragged cliff, whose dangerous path we tried ! 
.And, last, this lofty mountain's weary side ! " 

There is, in imitative harmony, an act of express- 
ing a slow and difficult movement by adding to 



116 OBSERVATIONS ON THE 

the usual number of pauses in a verse. This is 
observable in the line that describes the ascent 
of the mountain : 

And last || this lofty mountain's || weary side ||. 

Here we find the number of pauses, or musical 
bars, which, in an heroic verse, is commonly two, 
increased to three. 

The liquid melody, and the numerous sweetness 
of expression, in the following descriptive lines, is 
almost inimitably beautiful : 

" Sweet to the sight is Zabran's flowery plain, 
And once by nymphs and shepherds loved in vain ! 
No more the virgins shall delight to rove 
By Sargis' banks, or Irwan's shady grove; 
On Tarkie's mountain catch the cooling'gale, 
Or breathe the sweets of Aly's flowery vale." 

Nevertheless, in this delightful landscape there is 
an obvious fault ; there is no distinction between 
the plain of Zabran and the vale of Aly; they 
are both flowery, and consequently undiversined. 
This could not proceed from the poet's want of 
judgment, but from inattention: it had not oc- 
curred to him that he had employed the epithet 
flowery twice within so short a compass ; an 
oversight which those who are accustomed to 
poetical, or, indeed, to any other species of com- 
position, know to be very possible. 

Nothing can be more beautifully conceived, or 
more pathetically expressed, than the shepherd's 



ORIENTAL ECLOGUES. 117 

apprehensions for his fair countrywomen, exposed 
to the ravages of the invaders : 

" In vain Circassia boasts her spicy groves, 

For ever famed for pure and happy loves : 

In vain she boasts her fairest of the fair, 

Their eyes' blue languish, and their golden hair ! 

Those eyes in tears their fruitless grief shall send; 

Those hairs the Tartar's cruel hand shall rend." 

There is certainly some very powerful charm in 
the liquid melody of sounds. The editor of these 
poems could never read or hear the following 
verse repeated, without a degree of pleasure other- 
wise entirely unaccountable : 

" Their eyes' blue languish, and their golden hair." 

Such are the Oriental Eclogues, which we leave 
with the same kind of anxious pleasure we feel 
upon a temporary parting with a beloved friend. 



118 



OBSERVATIONS 

ON THE ODES, DESCRIPTIVE AND 
ALLEGORICAL. 



The genius of Collins was capable of every de- 
gree of excellence in lyric poetry, and perfectly 
qualified for that high province of the muse. 
Possessed of a native ear for all the varieties of 
harmony and modulation, susceptible of the finest 
feelings of tenderness and humanity, but, above 
all, carried away by that high enthusiasm which 
gives to imagination its strongest colouring, he 
was at once capable of soothing the ear with the 
melody of his numbers, of influencing the passions 
by the force of his pathos, and of gratifying the 
fancy by the luxury of description. 

In consequence of these powers, but, more 
particularly, in consideration of the last, he chose 
such subjects for his lyric essays as were most 
favourable for the indulgence of description and 
allegory ; where he could exercise his powers in 
moral and personal painting; where he could 
exert his invention in conferring new attributes 



ON THE ODES. 119 

on images or objects already known, and de- 
scribed by a determinate number of characteristics ; 
where he might give an uncommon eclat to his 
figures, by placing them in happier attitudes, or 
in more advantageous lights, and introduce new 
forms from the moral and intellectual world into 
the society of impersonated beings. 

Such, no doubt, were the privileges which the 
poet expected, and such were the advantages he 
derived from the descriptive and allegorical nature 
of his themes. 

It seems to have been the whole industry of 
our author, (and it is, at the same time, almost 
all the claim to moral excellence his writings can 
boast,) to promote the influence of the social vir- 
tues, by painting them in the fairest and happiest 
lights. 

" Melior fieri tuendo " 

would be no improper motto to his poems in 
general: but of his lyric poems it seems to be 
the whole moral tendency and effect. If, there- 
fore, it should appear to some readers, that he 
has been more industrious to cultivate description 
than sentiment, it may be observed, that his 
descriptions themselves are sentimental, and an- 
swer the whole end of that species of writing, by 
embellishing every feature of virtue, and by con- 
veying, - through the effects of the pencil, the 
finest moral lessons to the mind. 

13 



120 OBSERVATIONS 

Horace speaks of the fidelity of the ear in pre- 
ference to the uncertainty of the eye ; but if the 
mind receives conviction, it is certainly of very 
little importance through what medium, or by 
which of the senses it is conveyed. The impres- 
sions left on the imagination may possibly be 
thought less durable than the deposits of the 
memory, but it may very well admit of a question, 
whether a conclusion of reason, or an impression 
of imagination, will soonest make it sway to the 
heart. A moral precept, conveyed in words, is 
only an account of truth in its effects; a moral 
picture is truth exemplified ; and which is most 
likely to gain upon the affections, it may not be 
difficult to determine. 

This, however, must be allowed, that those 
works approach the nearest to perfection which 
unite these powers and advantages ; which at 
once influence the imagination, and engage the 
memory ; the former by the force of animated 
and striking description, the latter by a brief, but 
harmonious conveyance of precept : thus, while 
the heart is influenced through the operation of 
the passions or the fancy, the effect, which might 
otherwise have been transient, is secured by the 
cooperating power of the memory, which trea- 
sures up in a short aphorism the moral of the 
scene. 

This is a good reason, and this, perhaps, is the 
only reason that can be given, why our dramatic 



ON THE ODES. 121 

performances should generally end with a chain 
of couplets. In these the moral of the whole 
piece is usually conveyed ; and that assistance 
which the memory borrows from rhyme, as it was 
probably the original cause of it, gives it useful- 
ness and propriety even there. 

After these apologies for the descriptive turn 
of the following odes, something remains to be 
said on the origin and use of allegory in poetical 
composition. 

By this we are not to understand the trope in 
the schools, which is denned aliud verbis, aliud 
sensu ostendere; and of which Quintilian says, 
usus est, ut tristia dicamus melioribus verbis, 
aut bonse rei gratia qusedam contrariis signifi- 
cemus, &c. It is not the verbal, but the senti- 
mental allegory, not allegorical expression (which, 
indeed, might come under the term of metaphor), 
but allegorical imagery, that is here in question. 

When we endeavour to trace this species of 
figurative sentiment to its origin, we find it coeval 
with literature itself. It is generally agreed, that 
the most ancient productions are poetical ; and 
it is certain that the most ancient poems abound 
with allegorical imagery. 

If, then, it be allowed that the first literary 
productions were poetical ; we shall have little or 
no difficulty in discovering the origin of allegory. 

At the birth of letters, in the transition from 
hieroglyphical to literal expression, it is not to be 



122 OBSERVATIONS 

wondered if the custom of expressing ideas by 
personal images, which had so long prevailed, 
should still retain its influence on the mind, 
though the use of letters had rendered the prac- 
tical application of it superfluous. Those who 
had been accustomed to express strength by the 
image of an elephant, swiftness by that of a pan- 
ther, and courage by that of a Hon, would make 
no scruple of substituting, in letters, the symbols 
for the ideas they had been used to represent. 

Here we plainly see the origin of allegorical 
expression, that it arose from the ashes of hiero- 
glyphics ; and if to the same cause we should 
refer that figurative boldness of style and imagery 
which distinguish the oriental writings, we shall, 
perhaps, conclude more justly, than if we should 
impute it to the superior grandeur of eastern 
genius. 

From the same source with the verbal, we are 
to derive the sentimental allegory, which is no- 
thing more than a continuation of the metaphori- 
cal or symbolical expression of the several agents 
in an action, or the different objects in a scene. 

The latter most peculiarly comes under the 
denomination of allegorical imagery ; and in this 
species of allegory, we include the impersonation 
of passions, affections, virtues, and vices, &c. on 
account of which, principally, the following odes 
were properly termed, by their author, allego- 
rical. 



ON THE ODES. 123 

With respect to the utility of this figurative 
writing, the same arguments that have been ad- 
vanced in favour of descriptive poetry will be of 
weight likewise here. It is, indeed, from imper- 
sonation, or, as it is commonly termed, personifi- 
cation, that poetical description borrows its chief 
powers and graces. Without the aid of this, 
moral and intellectual painting would be flat and 
unanimated, and even the scenery of material 
objects would be dull, without the introduction 
of fictitious life. 

These observations will be most effectually 
illustrated by the sublime and beautiful odes that 
occasioned them ; in those it will appear how 
happily this allegorical painting may be executed 
by the genuine powers of poetical genius, and 
they will not fail to prove its force and utility by 
passing through the imagination to the heart. 



124 OBSERVATIONS 



ODE TO PITY. 



" By Pella's bard, a magic name, 

By all the griefs his thoughts could frame, 

Receive my humble rite : 
Long, Pity, let the nations view 
Thy sky- worn robes of tenderest blue, 

And eyes of dewy light ! " 

The propriety of invoking Pity, through the 
mediation of Euripides, is obvious. — That admi- 
rable poet had the keys of all the tender passions, 
and therefore could not but stand in the highest 
esteem with a writer of Mr. Collins's sensibility. — 
He did, indeed, admire him as much as Milton 
professedly did, and probably for the same rea- 
sons ; but we do not find that he has copied him 
so closely as the last mentioned poet has some- 
times done, and particularly in the opening of 
Samson Agonistes, which is an evident imitation 
of the following passage in the Phoenissas : 

c HyoO 7rdpoi6e, Gvyarep, ens rv(j)\S 7roB\ 
'Oc^daXfios el av, vavTikoi<nv aarpov cos • 
Aevp' els to \evpbv Trehov Xx vos TiOclv ep.bv^ 
UpoQaive Act. III. Sc. I. 

The " eyes of dewy light" is one of the happiest 



ON THE ODES. 125 

strokes of imagination, and may be ranked among 
those expressions wlrich 

" — give us back the image of the mind." 

" Wild Aran too has heard thy strains, 
And Echo, 'midst my native plains, 
Been soothed by Pity's lute." 

" There first the wren thy myrtles shed 
On gentlest Otway's infant head." 

Sussex, in which county the Aruri is a small 
river, had the honour of giving birth to Otway 
as well as to Collins : both these poets, unhap- 
pily, became the objects of that pity by which 
their writings are distinguished. There was a 
similitude in their genius and in their sufferings. 
There was a resemblance in the misfortunes and 
in the dissipation of their lives ; and the circum- 
stances of their death cannot be remembered 
without pain. 

The thought of painting in the temple of Pity 
the history of human misfortunes, and of drawing 
the scenes from the tragic muse, is very happy, 
and in every respect worthy the imagination of 
Collins. 



126 OBSERVATIONS 



ODE TO FEAR. 



Mr. Collins, who had often determined to 
apply himself to dramatic poetry, seems here, 
with the same view, to have addressed one of the 
principal powers of the drama, and to implore 
that mighty influence she had given to the genius 
of Shakespeare: 

" Hither again thy fury deal, 
Teach me but once like him to feel: 
His cypress wreath my meed decree, 
And I, Fear, will dwell with thee I " 

In the construction of this nervous ode, the 
author has shown equal power of judgment and 
imagination. Nothing can be more striking than 
the violent and abrupt abbreviation of the mea- 
sure in the fifth and sixth verses, when he feels 
the strong influence of the power he invokes : 

" Ah Fear ! ah frantic Fear ! 
I see, I see thee near." 

The editor of these poems has met with nothing 
in the same species of poetry, either in his own, 
or in any other language, equal, in all respects, 
to the following description of Danger : 



ON THE ODES. 127 

" Danger whose limbs of giant mould 
What mortal eye can fix'd behold? 
Who stalks his round, an hideous form, 
Howling amidst the midnight storm, 
Or throws him on the ridgy steep 
Of some loose hanging rock to sleep." 

It is impossible to contemplate the image con- 
veyed in the two last verses, without those emo- 
tions of terror it was intended to excite. It has, 
moreover, the entire advantage of novelty to 
recommend it ; for there is too much originality 
in all the circumstances, to suppose that the 
author had in his eye that description of the 
penal situation of Catiline in the ninth JEneid : 

" Te, Catilina, minaci 



Pendentem scopulo." 

The archetype of the English poet's idea was in 
Nature, and, probably, to her alone he was in- 
debted for the thought. From her, likewise, he 
derived that magnificence of conception, that 
horrible grandeur of imagery, displayed in the 
following lines : 

" And those, the fiends, who, near allied, 
O'er Nature's wounds and wrecks preside; 
While Vengeance in the lurid air 
Lifts her red arm, exposed and bare : 
On whom that ravening brood of fate, 
Who lap the blood of sorrow, wait." 

That nutritive enthusiasm, which cherishes the 



128 OBSERVATIONS 

seeds of poetry, and which is, indeed, the only 
soil wherein they will grow to perfection, lays 
open the mind to all the influences of fiction. A 
passion for whatever is greatly wild or magnificent 
in the works of nature seduces the imagination 
to attend to all that is extravagant, however un- 
natural. Milton was notoriously fond of high 
romance and gothic diableries ; and Collins, who 
in genius and enthusiasm bore no very distant 
resemblance to Milton, was wholly carried away 
by the same attachments. 

" Be mine to read the visions old. 
Which thy awakening bards have told : 
And, lest thou meet my blasted view, 
Hold each strange tale devoutly true." 

" On that thrice hallow'd eve,".&c. 

There is an old traditionary superstition, that on 
St. Mark's eve, the forms of all such persons as 
shall die within the ensuing year make their 
solemn entry into the churches of their respective 
parishes, as St. Patrick swam over the Channel, 
without their heads. 



ON THE ODES. 129 



ODE TO SIMPLICITY 



The measure of the ancient ballad seems to have 
been made choice of for this ode, on account of 
the subject ; and it has, indeed, an air of sim- 
plicity, not altogether unaffecting : 

" By all the honey' d store 
On Hybla's thymy shore, 
By all her blooms, and mingled murmurs dear, 
By her whose love-lorn woe, 
In evening musings slow, 
Sooth'd sweetly sad Electra's poet's ear." 

This allegorical imagery of the honeyed store, the 
blooms, and mingled murmurs of Hybla, alluding 
to the sweetness and beauty of the Attic poetry, 
has the finest and the happiest effect: yet, pos- 
sibly, it will bear a question, whether the ancient 
Greek tragedians had a general claim to simpli- 
city in any thing more than the plans of their 
drama. Their language, at least, was infinitely 
metaphorical ; yet it must be owned that they 
justly copied nature and the passions, and so far, 
certainly, they were entitled to the palm of true 
simplicity ; the following most beautiful speech 



130 OBSERVATIONS 

of Polynices will be a monument of this, so long 
as poetry shall last : 

-7T0\v§CLKpVS 6° d<pLKOfJL7]V 



"Kpovios Idcov fieXadpa, kcli ^cofiovs Becov. 
Tvyivdcria #' olcriv everpdcpr/v^ AtpKrjs, 6' vdcop, 
t Q,v ov dacaicos aTreXaSels, ^ivr]v ttoKlv 
Naia), di oacrcov vdpC e^cou daKpvppoovv. 

AAA €K yap akyovs akyos av, ere bepKop.ai 
Kdpa gvprjKes, Ka\ 7T€7t\ovs pLeXayxipovs 

Exovaai/. Eunp. Phoeniss. ver. 369. 

22 " But staid to sing alone 

33 To one distinguish' d throne." 

The poet cuts off the prevalence of simplicity 
among the Romans with the reign of Augustus ; 
and. indeed, it did not continue much longer, 
most of the compositions, after that date, giving 
into false and artificial ornament. 

" No more, in hall or bower, 
The passions otvu thy poorer, 
Love, only love, her forceless numbers mean." 

In these lines the writings of the Provencal poets 
are principally alluded to, in which simplicity is 
generally sacrificed to the rhapsodies of romantic 
love. 



ON THE ODES. 131 



ODE ON THE POETICAL CHARACTER. 

Procnl ! ! procul este profani ! 

This ode is so infinitely abstracted and replete 
with high enthusiasm, that it will find few readers 
capable of entering into the spirit of it, or of 
relishing its beauties. There is a style of senti- 
ment as utterly unintelligible to common capaci- 
ties, as if the subject were treated in an unknown 
language; and it is on the same account that 
abstracted poetry will never have many admirers. 

The authors of such poems must be content 
with the approbation of those heaven-favoured 
geniuses, who, by a similarity of taste and senti- 
ment, are enabled to penetrate the high mysteries 
of inspired fancy, and to pursue the loftiest flights 
of enthusiastic imagination. Nevertheless, the 
praise of the distinguished few is certainly prefer- 
able to the applause of the undiscerning million ; 
for all praise is valuable in proportion to the 
judgment of those who confer it. 

As the subject of this ode is uncommon, so are 
the style and expression highly metaphorical and 
abstracted : thus the sun is called " the rich- 



132 OBSERVATIONS 

hair'd youth of morn," the ideas are termed 
"the shadowy tribes of mind," &c. We are 
struck with the propriety, of this mode of expres- 
sion here, and it affords us new proofs of the 
analogy that subsists between language and sen- 
timent. 

Nothing can be more loftily imagined than the 
creation of the cestus of Fancy in this ode : the 
allegorical imagery is rich and sublime : and the 
observation, that the dangerous passions kept aloof 
during the operation, is founded on the strictest 
philosophical truth: for poetical fancy can exist 
only in minds that are perfectly serene, and in 
some measure abstracted from the influences of 
sense. 

The scene of Milton's "inspiring hour" is per- 
fectly in character, and described with all those 
wild-wood appearances of which the great poet 
was so enthusiastically fond : 

" I view that oak, the fancied glades among, 

By which as Milton lay, his evening ear, 

Nigh sphered in heaven, its native strains could hear." * 



ON THE ODES. 133 



ODE, 

WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1746. 

ODE TO MERCY. 

The Ode written in 1746, and the Ode to Mercy, 
seem to have been written on the same occasion, 
viz. the late rebellion ; the former in memory of 
those heroes who fell in defence of their country, 
the latter to excite sentiments of compassion in 
favour of those unhappy and deluded wretches 
who became a sacrifice to public justice. 

The language and imagery of both are very 
beautiful ; but the scene and figures described, 
in the strophe of the Ode to Mercy, are exqui- 
sitely striking, and would afford a painter one of 
the finest subjects in the world. 



134 OBSERVATIONS 



ODE TO LIBERTY. 

The ancient states of Greece, perhaps the only 
ones in which a perfect model of liberty ever 
existed, are naturally brought to view in the 
opening of the poem : 

" Who shall awake the Spartan fife, 
And call in solemn sounds to life, 
The youths, whose locks divinely spreading, 
Like vernal hyacinths in sullen hue. " 

There is something extremely bold in this imagery 
of the locks of the Spartan youths, and greatly 
superior to -that description Jocasta gives us of 
the hair of Polynices : 

Bocrrp-ux^v re Kvavoxpara ^aiVas 
likoKdfiov ■ 

" What new Alcaeus, fancy-blest, 

Shall sing the sword, in myrtles drest," &c. 

This alludes to a fragment of Alcaeus still remain- 
ing, in which the poet celebrates Harmodius and 
Aristogiton, who slew the tyrant Hipparchus, and 
thereby restored the liberty of Athens. 

The fall of Rome is here most nervously de- 
scribed in one line 

" With heaviest sound, a giant statue, fell." 



ON THE ODES. 135 

The thought seems altogether new, and the imi- 
tative harmony in the structure of the verse is 
admirable. 

After bewailing the ruin of ancient liberty, the 
poet considers the influence it has retained, or 
still retains, among the moderns; and here the 
free republics of Italy naturally engage his atten- 
tion. — Florence, indeed, only to be lamented on 
account of losing its liberty under those patrons 
of letters, the Medicean family ; the jealous Pisa, 
justly so called, in respect to its long impatience 
and regret under the same yoke ; and the small 
Marino, which, however unrespectable with regard 
to power or extent of territory, has, at least, this 
distinction to boast, that it has preserved its 
liberty longer than any other state, ancient or 
modern, having, without any revolution, retained 
its present mode of government near fourteen 
hundred years. Moreover the patron saint who 
founded it, and from whom it takes its name, 
deserves this poetical record, as he is, perhaps, 
the only saint that ever contributed to the estab- 
lishment of freedom. 

" Nor e'er her former pride relate 
To sad Liguria's bleeding state." 

In these lines the poet alludes to those ravages 
in the state of Genoa, occasioned by the unhappy 
divisions of the Guelphs and Gibelines. 

M When the favour' d of thy choice, 

The daring archer heard thy voice." 
14 



136 OBSERVATIONS 

For an account of the celebrated event referred 
to in these verses, see Voltaire's Epistle to the 
King of Prussia. 

" Those whom the rod of Alva bruised, 
Whose crown a British queen refused 1 n 

The Flemings were so dreadfully oppressed by 
this sanguinary general of Philip the Second, that 
they offered their sovereignty to Elizabeth ; but, 
happily for her subjects, she had policy and mag- 
nanimity enough to refuse it. Desormeaux, in 
his Abrege Chronologique de l'Histoire d'Espagne, 
thus describes the sufferings of the Flemings : 
" Le due d'Albe achevoit de reduire les Flamands 
au desespoir. Apres avoir inonde les echafauds 
du sang le plus noble et le plus precieux, il fai- 
soit construire des citadelles en divers endroits, 
et vouloit etablir l'Alcavala, ce tribute onereux 
qui avoit ete longtems en usage parmi les Espa- 
gnols." — Abreg. Chron. torn. iv. 



- Mona, 



Where thousand elfin shapes abide." 

Mona is properly the Roman name of the Isle of 
Anglesey, anciently so famous for its Druids; 
but sometimes, as in this place, it is given to the 
Isle of Man. Both these isles still retain much 
of the genius of superstition, and are now the 
only places where there is the least chance of 
finding a fairy. 



ON THE ODES. 337 



ODE TO A LADY, 

OH THE DEATH OF COLONEL ROSS, IN THE ACTION OP 
FONTENOY. 



The iambic^kind of numbers in which this ode 
is conceived seems as well calculated for tender 
and plaintive subjects, as for those where strength 
or rapidity is required. — ■ This, perhaps, is owing 
to the repetition of the strain in the same stanza ; 
for sorrow rejects variety, and affects a uni- 
formity of complaint. It is needless to observe, 
that this ode is replete with harmony, spirit, and 
pathos ; and there surely appears no reason why 
the seventh and eighth stanzas should be omitted 
in that copy printed in Dodsley's Collection of 
Poems. 



138 OBSERVATIONS 



ODE TO EVENING. 



The blank ode has for some time solicited ad- 
mission into the English poetry ; but its efforts, 
hitherto, seem to have been in vain, at least its 
reception has been no more than partial. It 
remains a question, then, whether there is not 
something in the nature of blank verse less 
adapted to the lyric than to the heroic measure, 
since, though it has been generally received in 
the latter, it is yet unadopted in the former. In 
order to discover this, we are to consider the dif- 
ferent modes of these different species of poetry. 
That of the heroic is uniform ; that of the lyric is 
various ; and in these circumstances of uniformity 
and variety probably lies the cause why blank 
vefSe has been successful in the one, and unac- 
ceptable in the other. While it presented itself 
only in one form, it was familiarized to the ear 
by custom ; but where it was obliged to assume 
the different shapes of the lyric muse, it seemed 
still a stranger of uncouth figure, was received 
rather with curiosity than pleasure, and enter- 
tained without that ease or satisfaction which 



ON THE ODES. 139 

acquaintance and familiarity produce. — More- 
over, the heroic blank verse obtained a sanction 
of infinite importance to its general reception, 
when it was adopted by one of the greatest poets 
the world ever produced, and was made the 
vehicle of the noblest poem that ever was written. 
When this poem at length extorted that applause 
which ignorance and prejudice had united to 
withhold, the versification soon found its imita- 
tors, and became more generally successful than 
even in those countries from whence it was im- 
ported. But lyric blank verse had met with no 
such advantages ; for Mr. Collins, whose genius 
and judgment in harmony might have given it so 
powerful an effect, has left us but one specimen 
of it in the Ode to Evening. 

In the choice of his measure he seems to have 
had in his eye Horace's Ode to Pyrrha ; for this 
; ode bears the nearest resemblance to that mixed 
kind of the asclepiad and pherecratic verse ; and 
j that resemblance in some degree reconciles us to 
the want of rhyme, while it reminds us of those 
great masters of antiquity, whose works had no 
need of this whimsical jingle of sounds. 

From the following passage one might be in- 
duced to think that the poet had it in view to 
render his subject and his versification suitable to 
.each other on this occasion, and that, when he 
addressed himself to the sober power of Evening, 



140 OBSERVATIONS 

he had thought proper to lay aside the foppery 
of rhyme : 

" Now teach me, maid composed, 

To breathe some soften' d strain, 
Whose numbers, stealing through thy darkening vale, 
May not unseemly with its stillness suit, 

As, musing slow, I hail 

Thy genial loved return ! " 

But whatever were the numbers or the versifi- 
cation of this ode, the imagery and enthusiasm it 
contains could not fail of rendering it delightful. 
No other of Mr. Collins's odes is more generally 
characteristic of his genius. In one place we dis- 
cover his passion for visionary beings : 

" For when thy folding-star arising shows 
His paly circlet, at his warning lamp 

The fragrant Hours, and Elves 

Who slept in buds the day, 

And many a Nymph who wreathes her brows with' sedge, 
And sheds the freshening dew, and, lovelier still, 

The pensive Pleasures sweet, 

Prepare thy shadowy car." 

In another we behold his strong bias to melan- 
choly : 

" Then let me rove some wild and heathy scene, 
Or find some ruin 'midst its dreary dells, 

Whose walls more awful nod 

By thy religious gleams.' ■ 



ON THE ODES. 141 

Then appears his taste for what is wildly grand 
and magnificent in nature ; when, prevented by 
storms from enjoying his evening walk, he wishes 
for a situation, 

" That from the mountain's side 
Views wilds and swelling floods ; " 

And through the whole, his invariable attachment 
to the expression of painting : 

" and marks o'er all 

Thy dewy fingers draw 
The gradual dusky veil." 

It might be a sufficient encomium on this beau- 
tiful ode to observe, that it has been particularly 
admired by a lady to whom nature has given the 
most perfect principles of taste. She has not 
even complained of the want of rhyme in it ; a 
circumstance by no means unfavourable to the 
cause of lyric blank verse ; for surely, if a fair 
reader can endure an ode without bells and 
chimes, the masculine genius may dispense with 
them. 



142 OBSERVATIONS 



THE MANNERS. 
AN ODE. 



From the subject and sentiments of this ode, it 
seems not improbable that the author wrote it 
about the time when he left the university; when, 
weary with the pursuit of academical studies, he 
no longer confined himself to the search of theo- 
retical knowledge, but commenced the scholar of 
humanity, to study nature in her works, and man 
in society. 

The following farewell to Science exhibits a 
very just as well as striking picture : for however 
exalted in theory the Platonic doctrines may ap- 
pear, it is certain that Platonism and Pyrrhonism 
are nearly allied : 

" Farewell the porch, whose roof is seen, 
Arch'd with the enlivening olive's green: 
Where Science, prank'd in tissned vest, 
By Reason, Pride, and Fancy drest, 
Comes like a bride, so trim array'd, 
To wed with Donbt in Plato's shade ! " 



ON THE ODES. 143 

When the mind goes in pursuit of visionary sys- 
tems, it is not far from the regions of doubt ; and 
the greater its capacity to think abstractedly, to 
reason and refine, the more it will be exposed to, 
and bewildered in, uncertainty. — From an enthu- 
siastic warmth of temper, indeed, we may for 
a while be encouraged to persist in some favourite 
doctrine, or to adhere to some adopted system; 
but when that enthusiasm, which is founded on 
the vivacity of the passions, gradually cools and 
dies away with them, the opinions it supported 
drop from us, and we are thrown upon the in- 
hospitable shore of doubt. — A striking proof of 
the necessity of some moral rule of wisdom and 
virtue, and some system of happiness established 
by unerring knowledge, and unlimited power. 

In the poet's address to Humour in this ode 
there is one image of singular beauty and pro- 
priety. The ornaments in the hair of Wit are of 
such a nature, and disposed in such a manner, as 
to be perfectly symbolical and characteristic : 

' " Me too amidst thy band admit, 

There where the young-eyed healthful Wit, 

(Whose jewels in his crisped hair 

Are placed each other's beams to share, 

Whom no delights from thee divide) 

In laughter loosed, attends thy side." 

Nothing could be more expressive of wit, which 
consists in a happy collision of comparative and 



144 OBSERVATIONS 

relative images, than this reciprocal reflection of 
light from the disposition of the jewels. 

" Humour, thou whose name is known 
To Britain's favour'd isle alone." 

The author could only mean to apply this to the 
time when he wrote, since other nations had pro- 
duced works of great humour, as he himself ac- 
knowledges afterwards. 

" By old Miletus," &c. 

" By all you taught the Tuscan maids," &c. 

The Milesian and Tuscan romances were by no 
means distinguished for humour; but as they 
were the models of that species of writing in 
which humour was afterwards employed, they are, 
probably for that reason only, mentioned here. 



ON THE ODES. 145 



THE PASSIONS. 



AN ODE FOR MUSIC. 



If the music which was composed for this ode 
had equal merit with the ode itself, it must have 
been the most excellent performance of the kind 
in which poetry and music have, in modern 
times, united. Other pieces of the same nature 
have derived their greatest reputation from the 
perfection of the music that accompanied them, 
having in themselves little more merit than that 
of an ordinary ballad : but in this we have the 
whole soul and power of poetry — expression that, 
even without the aid of music, strikes to the 
heart ; and imagery of power enough to transport 
the attention, without the forceful alliance of cor- 
responding sounds ! what, then, must have been 
the effect of these united ! 

It is very observable, that though the measure 
is the same, in which the musical efforts of Fear, 
Anger, and Despair are described, yet, by the 
variation of the cadence, the character and opera- 



146 OBSERVATIONS 

tion of each is strongly expressed : thus particu- 
larly of Despair : 

" With woful measures wan Despair — 
Low, sullen sounds his grief beguiled, 

A solemn, strange, and mingled air, 

'Twas sad by fits, by starts 'twas wild." 

He must be a very unskilful composer who could 
not catch the power of imitative harmony from 
these lines ! 

The picture of Hope that follows this is beau- 
tiful almost beyond imitation. By the united 
powers of imagery and harmony, that delightful 
being is exhibited with all the charms and graces 
that pleasure and fancy have appropriated to 
her: 

Kelegat, qui semel percurrit ; 
Qui nunquam legit, legat. 

" Bat thou, Hope, with eyes so fair, 

What was thy delighted measure ! 
Still it whisper' d promised pleasure, 

And bade the lovely scenes at distance hail ! 
Still would her touch the strain prolong, 

And from the rocks, the woods, the vale, 
She call'd on Echo still through all the song ; 

And where her sweetest theme she chose, 

A soft responsive voice was heard at every close, 
And Hope enchanted smiled, and waved her golden hair." 

In what an exalted light does the above stanza 



ON THE ODES. 147 

place this great master of poetical imagery and 
harmony ! what varied sweetness of numbers ! 
what delicacy of judgment and expression ! how 
characteristically does Hope prolong her strain, 
repeat her soothing closes, call upon her associate 
Echo for the same purposes, and display every 
pleasing grace peculiar to her ! 

" And Hope enchanted smiled, and waved her golden hair.'* 

Legat, qui nunquam legit ; 
Qui semel percurrit, relegat. 

The descriptions of Joy, Jealousy, and Revenge 
are excellent, though not equally so. Those of 
Melancholy and Cheerfulness are superior to 
every thing of the kind ; and, upon the whole, 
there may be very little hazard in asserting, that 
this is the finest ode in the English language. 



148 OBSERVATIONS 



AN EPISTLE 

TO SIR THOMAS HANMER, ON HIS EDITION OP 
SHAKESPEARE'S WORKS. 



This poem was written by our author at the 
university, about the time when Sir Thomas Han- 
mer's pompous edition of Shakespeare was printed 
at Oxford. If it has not so much merit as the 
rest of his poems, it has still more than the sub- 
ject deserves. The versification is easy and gen- 
teel, and the allusions always poetical. The 
character of the poet Fletcher in particular is . 
very justly drawn in this epistle. 



ON THE ODES. 149 






DIRGE W CYMBELINE. 
ODE ON THE DEATH OF THOMSON. 



Mr. Collins had skill to complain. Of that 
mournful melody, and those tender images, which 
are the distinguishing excellencies of such pieces 
as bewail departed friendship, or beauty, he was 
an almost unequaled master. He knew per- 
fectly to exhibit such circumstances, peculiar to 
the objects, as awaken the influences of pity; 
and while, from his own great sensibility, he felt 
what he wrote, he naturally addressed himself to 
the feelings of other© 

To read such lines as the following, all-beauti- 
ful and tender as they are, without corresponding 
emotions of pity, is surely impossible : 

\ 

" The tender thought on thee shall dwell ; 
Each lonely scene shall thee restore, 

For thee the tear be duly shed ; 
Beloved till life can charm no more, 

And mourn' d till Pity's self be dead." 

The Ode on the Death of Thomson seems to have 



150 OBSERVATIONS ON THE ODES. 

been written in an excursion to Richmond by 
water. The rural scenery has a proper effect in 
an ode to the memory of a poet, much of whose 
merit lay in descriptions of the same kind ; and 
the appellations of " Druid," and u meek Na- 
ture's child," are happily characteristic. For the 
better understanding of this ode, it is necessary 
to remember, that Mr. Thomson lies buried in 
the church of Richmond. 



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